nwasianweekly.com
June 16, 2007

Vincent Chin

25 years after Vincent Chin, are we better off?

The brutality and senselessness of Vincent Chin’s death still resonates with us 25 years later.

On the night of June 19, 1982, the 27-year-old Chinese American was out on the town with friends in Detroit when he was singled out by a pair of white autoworkers who thought he was Japanese. At the time, anti-Japan sentiment was running high; Japan was being blamed for the American auto industry’s downturn. Using a baseball bat, the autoworkers beat Chin over and over. Chin died four days later.

Why do we remain haunted by this killing? The viciousness of it all, for one. But also because, a quarter of a century later, we know it could happen again today.

And it has. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, a Sikh business owner in Mesa, Ariz., was shot and killed in front of his gas station by a man who yelled, “I stand for America all the way!” as he was being arrested. All across the United States, mosques as well as hundreds of people of Muslim, South Asian and Middle Eastern descent have reported incidents of violence, arson, vandalism, hate mail, threats and hate speech since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In addition, thousands of Muslims and South Asians have found themselves on the government’s “no-fly list” — the list of individuals not allowed to board commercial airplanes because they could be terrorists. We all know the vast majority of them are innocent, and yet they continue to be hassled at airports. They have been targeted by the U.S. government due to their names, national origins or perhaps even their political beliefs. Profiling of this kind is unacceptable, even when the country is in the midst of fighting terrorism.

Sept. 11 has become an excuse for racial profiling. That’s terrible. As if appearance is any indicator of a person’s loyalty, principles, innocence or guilt.

That’s what happened to Vincent Chin — he was profiled by the men who killed him.

But is the news since Chin’s death all bad? Has the country made any progress?

It has.

The case of Vincent Chin spurred the Asian American community to band together like it never had before. It was no longer the Japanese on one side, the Chinese on the other, the Koreans over there, the Filipinos over here. We came together when we realized that Chin was mistaken for a Japanese. ‘If Chin could be misidentified, any of us could be too,’ we thought. ‘The mainstream community doesn’t see us as being separate, so why should we?’ So we started forming a Pan-Asian coalition in the interest of all Asian Pacific Americans. Since then, more and more generations have understood the value of functioning as a single community.

Another positive change: the creation of hate-crime laws at the federal, state and local levels. These laws not only condemn hate-motivated acts based on a person’s race, ethnicity, gender, national origin, religion or sexual orientation, but they also outline the repercussions of such behavior. We are glad to see the government take a strong stand against hate crimes. Now victims have the law on their side.

To build on our accomplishments, we, as a community, must work harder to educate others. There are myriad opportunities in the workplace, in schools and in the community to teach people that, despite differences in skin color, names and cultural backgrounds, all of us are more alike than different. We shouldn’t be wary of interacting with people who don’t look like we do. All of us must put our biases and stereotypes aside and make the effort to view each other as human beings.

If that had happened in the case of Vincent Chin, he might still be alive today.

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