Vincent Chin

Asian civil rights movement. But the roots of that movement were laid with this very case, the case of Vincent Chin, all the way back in nineteen eighty two. And on today's show, we'll have a guest who will talk with us about what made this case so groundbreaking. But first, our producer Trevor is going to take us through today's case. The twenty seven year old was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two men who were fined three thousand dollars and received no jail time.

had worked at Chrysler Automotive for years. At the time, Ford, GM and Chrysler all had headquarters in Detroit and were in rapid decline. This was due to competition from carmakers in Japan, Korea, and Germany, and during this time, scores of Detroit autoworkers were being laid off, including Evans's nephew, Michael Knits, and like many they blamed their layoffs on competition from Asian countries. Ebans and Knits happened to be

at the same nightclub as Vincent Chinn that night. They reportedly shouted expletives at him and persistently insulted him on the basis of his heritage. The argument escalated and Vincent and his friends eventually left the club, but Ebens followed him to a McDonald's, where he and Knits attacked and

beat him to death. Ronald Ebens and Michael Knits were charged with second degree murder and Evans was fired the following year, and then, in a devastating blow to the Asian American community, the Detroit ACLU and National Lawyer's Guild came out saying that the killing of Vincent Chen did not violate his civil rights, and disappointingly, government officials and politicians agreed and in March of the next year, Knits and Ebens successfully entered a plea bargain that brought charges

against them down to manslaughter. They received no jail time and only three years probation, a three thousand dollars fine, and seven hundred and eighty dollars in court fees. This event sparked the formation of a new civil rights group.

They were called American Citizens for Justice or ACJ, and they held a protest in May of that year, claiming that Judge Charles Kaufman's decision was tantamount to giving out quote a license to kill for three thousand dollars, provided you have a steady job or are a student, and the victim is Chinese end quote. Michael Nitz was acquitted on both charges, but Ronald Ebens was found guilty of one count and sentenced to twenty five years in prison,

but ebens conviction was overturned. Instead, Ronald Ebens was ordered to pay Chin's family one point five million dollars at a rate of two hundred dollars a month for two years, but he never did and the family of Vincent Chen has to this day never seen a dime. And so who was Vincent Chen? And how does this story reflect the ever present issue of anti Asian racism and violence in America.

them across the country. And you're talking about you know, communities whose homes were burnt down, who were forced to leave their sites, and some had to go underground and created these underground tunnels where they couldn't walk outside into streets but actually had to you know, go underground quite

literally to move from place to place. And so, you know, even at that moment in the eighteen seventies, you see this extreme sort of violence against the Chinese workers that was also followed, you know, by other attacks against South Asian American immigrants. There were you know, Filipino workers that were being attacked, you know, in the nineteen thirties, and you know, of course, you have the moment of the

nineteen forties with the massive incarceration of Japanese Americans. That didn't end, you know, in mid century, but we saw spikes, you know, with the Vincent Chinn incident in the nineteen eighties, and of course again he is one of the many Asian Americans that were attacked and violently attacked in his case. You know, it was such a egregious situation that the

community really mobilized against it. But we see this emerging again, you know, with anti Muslim, anti Arab American profiling, you know during nine to eleven and the attacks against you know, women wearing hey jobs because of their culturally signifier, you know that they bear and you know, again this is

this is just ongoing even to at present. You have the uptick you know of anti Asian violence because of the COVID event and the sparking of anti Asian racism, you know during this moment, you know, by many members

in our society. And so you see over ten thousand attacks have been recorded, and this is an underestimate in fact, you know that these are self recording documentation of people's experiences alongside the racial profiling of Chinese American Asian American scientists, you know, who are targeted by the FBI and you know whose lives are turned upside down with false accusations.

So these are the many different events across time, and then the various sorts of activities that have been targeting Asian Americans, you know, really kind of arising from the anti Asian hate and anti Asian racism that is in our country.

And I have two children of my own, I have sisters, and I am scared of their safety, for their safety and you know they're walking around trying to go get

groceries right taking the bus. That's a real concern. And those, I think, those particular stories that I hear on the news really struck home and really made me think about my own family myself, and you know, the kinds of dangers that they experience on an everyday basis, walking around minding their own business, doing their own things, And that is what was most heartbreaking for me, and it made

me think about the state of our country. You know, certain people are not able to walk around feeling a basic sense of safety. That they're always looking over their shoulders and you know, thinking about am I next? You know, is there someone behind me? And that's frightening. And I think that has caused tremendous anxiety, you know, within our community, and tremendous stress mental health issues are emerging.

case of Vincent Chen, he is Chinese American. But in the period of the nineteen eighties, it was really around the car industry, particularly of Japan's rise in the car manufacturing industry, that in many ways created a situation where there were such strong sentiments around faulting the Japanese as being the culprit of taking away jobs from Americans. And actually, you know, he is an American citizen. You know, Chinese, he is Chinese American and is a citizen of the

United States. And this is where I think the racial component really plays a role here that you know, just because he is Chinese or Asian appearing presenting, he is assumed to be a foreigner. And I think that there is this idea of Asian Americans as foreigners that are so steeped in our society that we don't consider them as full citizens, as first class citizens in the United States,

but we immediately associate them with a foreign country. And therefore, whenever there are political conflict or tensions going on, that Asians are immediately associated with those countries, even though they are often American born, American citizens, et cetera. And that is really what we see happening here. That the economy has a tremendous effect and because of the racialization of Chinese and Asian Americans as foreigners, that it becomes a

real issue. I think it's important to note that our immigration policies have always been set up to encourage a certain kind of migration from certain places for certain reasons, and this is absolutely true for Asian Americans. And this is where the racial capitalism comes in when you think of immigration expanding in order to increase a certain kind of workforce. And so if you track this over time, we see this happening, you know, with the railroad workers

that came to work as labor. And then you have you know, even today you have the HB one visas, and you know, the critical point was in nineteen sixty five when they stopped the quota system and really changed the immigration criteria that attracted people with education and skilled labor. So you had this opening where then a group of immigrants coming from everywhere, but especially Asia, who are highly educated and who have skills to offer to the US.

And so you know, these are the ways in which the immigration policies really kind of help to funnel certain kinds of workers into the United States. And it's it's very clear that at certain moments, you know why Asian immigrants were recruited, you know, were allowed in through immigration, such as the farm workers you know of the past, and the railroad workers, the farm workers of the past, and then now the tech workers you know of the present.

And this is how you see the convergence, you know, of the economic imperatives of the country really kind of moving forward with the support of immigration, and that's how you structure sort of the racial capitalism actually is constructed in a US, and that's how it's still unfolding.

Do you think that was a wake up call for our country to start recognizing that racism is alive for anti Asian Americans, Like, it's so heartbreaking.

realities of the diverse population of Asian Americans. You're talking about twenty three million Asian Americans, and as a group, they are the group with the widest income disparity of any racial group in the United States, which means that, yes, there are people doing really well economically among this group, but there are people who are doing incredibly poorly, you know. And you see this in education achievements, believe it or not,

but income levels, health equity. So this is where I think the stereotype hides, you know, this large spectrum and these realities you know, of people living sometimes you know, barely above means, you know, on welfare, in housing projects, and we don't see that, and once we get that in our head, we seem to project it, you know, onto all Asian Americans, and that is just not true.

And I think that with that, you know, being at the forefront of people's minds, they don't think of Asian Americans as experiencing any kind of structural racism, you know, or cultural racism. And you know, there's so many studies out there that show that Asian Americans hit a glass ceiling or a bamboo ceiling, even in the professional life that in fact, you know, there are many people who are stuck, you know, in lower management that are not

able to rise on top. So across the whole spectrum, you know, of the poor and even of the professional class, there's a lot of discrimination that needs to be addressed. It hasn't been because we haven't had that conversation. We haven't had the opportunity to really check in and say, you know, these things are really happening. Here are the information to data that we've collected, and here are the experiences.

LATINX populations. That's a key beginning in terms of transforming that knowledge base of who belongs in the United States, who are Americans, you know, broadly speaking, and you know, what have they contributed, you know, to our country to make it the you know, better and much more livable and in fact much more just because of their being here.

There is on the level of cultural representations, you know, how we are represented, whether we are represented you know, in media, the kinds of skewed images that we might have of certain populations that produce and continue and sustain the discrimination against them, the racism against them. Those are the things that we can correct, you know. And representation in the workspace, you know, I think that that's a key area where we do need leadership to represent the

people of this country. The leadership to represent you know, who we are as a group as a country. You know, I think that's that's critical to be in the boardroom to make decisions that matter to our communities. Those aspects are really really critical to achieving a more equitable, socially just society and representative you know, of who we are as a society. There are so many, so many arenas, you know, I think we need to make sure that the laws align with our goals and ideals, and I

think sort of we're chipping away slowly, you know. I think that we need to just work at small fronts, you know, in our daily lives as well as these larger societal changes, and only through that can we hope for true transformation in our country.

But in reference to Vincent Chin right, his killers sadly never saw any jail time. There was no justice for Vincent's family. I mean they were supposed to. The killers were supposed to pay a substantial amount of money to Vincent's family, and no one was held accountable. They didn't pay them a dime. How do we change that? How do we make people more accountable? Especially in a case like that.

to absolutely work on as a social justice system. That requires a certain knowledge around anti racism and around how it is actually practiced, you know, how it is actually displayed, and to have stricter laws around that and have a social system that recognize that this is an anti hate crime and be able to enforce it. It was murder, yes, absolutely,

I think that there is no way around it. There's so many cases you know that is clear cut, and yet we're not able to find justice, you know in those occasions, Vincent Chin, I mean it was it was so clear that it was racially motivated, that it was a violent, unjustified attack that put him in a coma and then killed him four days later. And you know, with two people, one holding him down and the other beating him with a baseball bat to a point where he can never wake up. That is a serious, serious

crime and a racially motivated crime. Absolutely, and you know, it accompanied racial slurs, It accompanied with comments around him being Japanese, right again, a mis reckon and even that, you know, I think that there's so much going on there. Our system failed us, and we need to make sure that that does not happen again for Asian Americans, for anyone in this country, you know, for all populations, and that is a crucial point that we need to get across as a society.

reaching out, you know, to others. If you see someone you know, go ahead and have a conversation, break the ice, and from there you build on smaller to larger conversations

to bigger item questions. But also you know, take time to learn on our own right about our different histories, because that is crucial, you know, I think to build empathy, as you mentioned, we need to understand how we come together, you know, as a fabric of woven together in this society, as a mosaic, you know, and we are you know, we are mosaic, you know, with many different strands of history coming into this country, and we need to understand how we have been in some ways not speaking to

each other, not learning this acknowledging that is the first step and then beginning the process you know, of re education and reaching out, you know, across to one another to make those human connections. And I think you'd be surprised at making those human connections, whether it is you know, at the school, you know, when you pick up your children, or at the workplace, or when you interact with someone

at a restaurant or a cafe. You will be amazed at the kinds of you know, response and rapport and and it's through those small intimate moments that grow into bigger social relations, you know, with one another, and I think that is it's that is itself really crucial. If people don't feel like they have time to you know, that's all right, right. There are lots of also websites that are available to look up you know, little pithy

historical narratives, and you know, everyone learns incrementally. It's not like we can sit down and like absorb every all histories of the world, you know, and through one book. That's not possible. But I think we do the small acts, and the small acts build up, and that's crucial.

has an amazing, amazing effect. And you know, those are the again, the small acts that people can take up, you know, to support Asian American community during this moment.

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