Vincent Chin
Vincent Chin was a Chinese American raised in Detroit, when in 1982 the American automotive industry, of which Detroit played an important role, declined. Autoworkers around the country experienced financial hardship as a result, and many attributed this downturn to the rise of Japanese car manufacturers. On June 19th, 1982, at a strip club with friends, Vincent Chin got in an argument with two white men, one of whom worked at Chrysler and his stepson who had just lost his job at Chrysler. One of the men shouted at Chin, “It’s because of you motherfuckers that we’re out of work.” The argument escalated to a physical altercation outside, where Chin was chased, beaten, and killed.
The two men were fined and put on probation, but never received jail time for killing Vincent Chin. The court ruling prompted nation-wide protests proclaiming that the sentencing was too light. This incident was an important catalyst for the solidification of a pan-Asian American identity across ethnicities due to the fact that Chin's death was a result of conflation of ethnicity and hatred against Japanese people (Little, 2020).
"Even though they knew that they killed him, they just let them off with some kind of minor offense, I don't know. I don't know how they got away with it, but they would never sent to jail or anything for that. So, there was a lot of bitterness among the Asian community about how can they get away with this guy? You know, if you're a white person and you do something to a minority, you don't get punished as much...kind of that's the way people think. Because your minority just don't have the same rights, or people don't treat you the same way as a Caucasian. It's not like you're shocked by it. It's just what always happens, right?" - Dr. Michael Ishioka
