JONIZZLE

A Slaying in 1982 Maintains Its Grip on Asian-Americans

June 18, 2002
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON

DETROIT - The tone for the event had to be just right -
solemn but powerful, backward-glancing, but forward-moving.
For more than two hours, in the cramped suburban office of
a group called American Citizens for Justice, a gathering
of mostly Asian-American college students mulled over
programs and speakers, buttons and T-shirts to make their
message resonate.

They were preparing to commemorate the day 20 years ago on
June 19 that Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American, was beaten
to death by two auto workers who apparently believed he was
Japanese.

The killing, in the midst of a recession linked, in part,
to the Japanese auto industry, sparked widespread protest
and a grassroots expansion of an Asian-American political
movement that began on college campuses in the 1960's. The
collective outrage led to a broadening of laws and
attitudes regarding civil rights and hate crimes.

Two decades later, many Asian-Americans say they face a
continuing struggle to be seen and heard in a nation that
still views race issues largely in terms of black and
white.

Persistent stereotypes, like the "perpetual foreigner" with
questionable allegiances or the "model minority" taking
over academic and professional institutions, foster a
social and political climate as potentially dangerous,
activists say, as the one that led to Vincent Chin's death.


This year, remembrances like the one here - which includes
an all-day civil rights "teach-in" and a screening of the
1989 documentary "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" - are planned
in cities across the country, including New York,
Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Organizers say the commemorations are especially important
now, with anti-foreign sentiment running high after Sept.
11 and many United States citizens under suspicion because
of their ethnicity. But for Asian-Americans the vigils also
offer a chance for personal reflection.

"The tragedy marked our political coming of age," said
Helen Zia, a writer who helped found American Citizens for
Justice in response to the Chin killing. "But we also need
to consider where we go from here."

The initial response to the death of Mr. Chin, in many
ways, reflected the relative invisibility of
Asian-Americans as a political force in 1982. Mr. Chin met
his assailants, Ronald Ebens, a supervisor at Chrysler, and
his stepson Michael Nitz, who had recently been laid off,
at a strip club in Highland Park, a small blue-collar city
surrounded by Detroit, where Mr. Chin was having his
bachelor party.

A dispute started inside the club about a stripper. Then a
dancer heard Mr. Ebens hurl profanities at Mr. Chin,
blaming him for the loss of American jobs. Moments later,
according to court documents, Mr. Ebens and Mr. Nitz chased
Mr. Chin down the street and crushed his skull with a
Louisville Slugger.

Asian-Americans called the killing a hate crime. But a
judge ruled the death was no more than the tragic end to a
barroom brawl. The two pleaded guilty to second-degree
manslaughter, and as part of the plea agreement, were
sentenced to three years of probation and $3,780 in fines
and court fees.

The court's response to the death of Mr. Chin - a
27-year-old industrial draftsman who was raised in Detroit
and whose livelihood, like those of his killers, depended
on the American auto industry - set off shockwaves through
Asian communities across the nation.

"It sent a chilling message that it didn't matter if you
worked for American companies and spoke English without an
accent, you still weren't regarded as a red-blooded
American worthy of rights," said Frank Wu, a law professor
at Howard University and author of "Yellow: Race in America
Beyond Black and White."

After the verdict, American Citizens for Justice, a
coalition of Asian-Americans and supporters from other
groups like the Urban League and the Anti-Defamation
League, organized protests.

Mr. Chin's mother, Lily Chin, had come to the United States
from China after World War II to marry David Chin, a
Chinese-American who fought for the United States during
the war. Inspired by Mrs. Chin's grief and determination,
the American Citizens for Justice took its message to the
federal government.

Federal authorities prosecuted Mr. Ebens and Mr. Nitz on
civil rights grounds, in the first such case involving an
Asian-American victim, but ultimately lost in 1987.

Mrs. Chin died last week in a Detroit nursing home.

The
fact that many of those now committed to Mr. Chin's legacy
were toddlers at the time of his killing is a sign both of
progress and of continuing challenges.

Since Mr. Chin's death, the Asian-American community has
grown substantially, both in sheer numbers and political
influence. The population of Americans with Asian or
Pacific Island heritage has increased roughly 70 percent in
the last decade, to more than 12 million.

Asian-American advocacy groups have won significant
political victories in the last two decades, from a 1988
law granting reparations to Japanese-Americans interned
during World War II to the expansion of mandates for
bilingual voting materials in heavily Asian districts, as
part of the Voting Rights Act of 1992.

As their political influence has increased, though, so have
acts of prejudice and intimidation. Anti-Asian incidents -
from vandalism to murder - ranged from 400 to 500 a year in
the mid-1990's, according to the National Asian Pacific
American Legal Consortium, a Washington-based advocacy
group.

The group received reports of nearly 250 ethnically
motivated incidents in the three months following Sept. 11,
most involving South Asians thought to be Arab.

Such tensions are emboldening a new generation of
Asian-American advocates. This spring, Asian-American
groups from several colleges organized a boycott of the
clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch to protest a line of
T-shirts with caricatured images of Asians and slogans like
"Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It
White."

Abercrombie & Fitch withdrew the line of T-shirts. A
spokesman for the retailer apologized, saying, "It's never
been our intention to offend anyone."
Roughly 60 colleges and universities now offer either
degrees or courses in Asian-American studies, and the
Vincent Chin case is frequently used as a teaching tool.

Many students, especially those from first-generation
immigrant families, still struggle against a cultural
reluctance to speak out. The Chin case "teaches students
the price of invisibility," said Scott Kurashige, an
assistant professor of Asian Pacific American Studies at
the University of Michigan.

Ijun Lai, a University of Michigan senior, cannot watch the
documentary about the Chin killing, which was nominated for
an Academy Award in 1989, without crying. The fact that Mr.
Chin was perceived to be a foreigner hits a nerve with her.


Raised in a predominantly white suburb of Chicago, Ms. Lai,
20, hung out at shopping malls with friends of many ethnic
groups and listened to the Smashing Pumpkins, Boyz II Men
and Korean hip hop. Even so, she cringes when recalling one
of her earliest memories of college - a group of rowdy
young men bowing and yelling "welcome to America" at her as
she walked down the street.

Ms. Lai is now co-chairwoman of the university's United
Asian American Organizations, an umbrella group of 26
student groups seeking to promote Asian-American issues.

For many Asian-American students, the popular notion of
Asian-Americans as a "model minority" is as damaging as
negative stereotypes of the past.

The concept of an inherently super-achieving group that
churns out violin virtuosos, high-technology entrepreneurs
and geniuses who blow the curve in physics classes, causes
Cesar Herrera, whose parents emigrated from the Philippines
when he was a toddler, to roll his eyes.

"It completely discounts diversity within our communities
and the very real problems of many Asian-Americans who are
poor and struggling," said Mr. Herrera, a 20-year-old
University of Michigan student who grew up in working-class
neighborhoods in Ohio and Michigan trying to steer clear of
Asian street gangs.

Michelle Lin, co-chairwoman with Ms. Lai of Michigan's
Asian-American student coalition, said "It's like the
administration actually uses the whole `model minority'
thing to keep from giving us resources."

Ms. Lin, Mr. Herrera and Ms. Lai acknowledge that most
Asian-American students on the Michigan campus are not as
politicized as they are. When the Asian-American student
group called a meeting to vote on a statement supporting
the university's affirmative action programs, a heated
debate broke out. The measure passed by only one vote.

But that kind of diversity is what they want other
Americans to recognize. They call it part of the social and
political legacy they have inherited from the death of
Vincent Chin.

As the meeting for the Chin remembrance ended, one last
issue remained. The final event is to be a march to Mr.
Chin's gravesite, led by a group of drummers and students
carrying banners. But the group's budget did not have
enough money left to pay for the bold banners the students
hoped to have made.

An original member of American Citizens for Justice offered
a piece of memorabilia the group has saved for 20 years, a
long white banner with blood-red letters that read, "It's
not fair" - Mr. Chin's last words before he slipped into a
coma.

The room went briefly silent, until one student said:
"Yeah, that's good. Let's carry their banner." Heads nodded
in agreement, hoping the message would resonate.