A look back, 20 years after the murder of Vincent Chin

June 18, 2002

On June 19, 1982, at the height of the automobile recession, Chinese American Vincent Chin was brutally murdered in a hate-motivated incident in Detroit.

Only 27-years-old, Chin had gone to a bar with three friends to celebrate his upcoming wedding when two autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and his recently laid-off stepson Michael Nitz, began to taunt him, reportedly calling him a "Jap." According to witnesses, Ebens stated, "It's because of you motherf---ers that we're out of work." An altercation ensued, and the group was thrown out of the bar.

Chin fled on foot but Ebens and Nitz chased him down in their car, eventually cornering him outside a fast-food restaurant. While Nitz held him down, Ebens used a baseball bat from the trunk of their car to repeatedly strike blows to Chin's head. As a result of the attack, Chin fell into a coma and died four days later from severe head injuries.

On Sept. 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 49-year-old Sikh American gas-station owner, was shot and killed in Mesa, Ariz., by a white male who fired shots at the victim from a pickup truck and sped away. As he was arrested and handcuffed by police, suspect Frank Roque, 42, reportedly stated, "I stand for America all the way." The alleged perpetrator also reportedly drove to another gas station where he shot at a Lebanese-American clerk and fired shots into the home of an Afghan-American family. Roque is quoted in police reports as saying that "all Arabs had to be shot" and that he wanted to "slit some Iranians' throats." The Maricopa County Attorney's Office is preparing to file criminal charges against Roque in this case.

While the second incident occurred nearly 20 years later, striking similarities exist between the murder cases of Vincent Chin and Balbir Singh Sodhi. Chin was killed because he was mistaken for being Japanese while Sodhi was targeted because he was thought to be of Arab descent. Both murders were motivated by hateful ignorance. In both cases, the murderers were angry, and they took their vengeance upon innocent individuals who they felt represented "the enemy."

Has anything really changed in the 20 years since the murder of Vincent Chin? The answer is yes.

The Chin case, which resulted in a punishment of only three years probation and a fine of $3,780 for the perpetrators, provided the impetus for national pan-Asian Pacific-American (APA) mobilization around an issue affecting the entire APA community. For the first time, people of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds united as Asian Pacific Americans to increase awareness of, and to speak out against, racially motivated hate crimes. The murder of Vincent Chin also established the organizations and mechanisms by which Asian Pacific Americans could ensure the prosecution of hate crimes against members of their community.

Nonetheless, the widespread backlash against Arab Americans, South Asian Americans, Muslim Americans, and Sikh Americans since Sept. 11 demonstrates that hate crimes remain an urgent and pressing issue that must be addressed. I believe that the government must do all that it can to improve and to expand existing hate-crimes legislation in order to send a strong message that such acts of hate and prejudice will not be tolerated.

Only 10 days before the 20th anniversary of her son's death, Vincent Chin's mother, Lily Chin, passed away. In the years following her son's death, Lily Chin sought to educate others about anti-Asian violence and to fight as an advocate for hate-crime victims in her hope that no mother would ever have to lose her child to hate and prejudice again.

Let us honor Lily Chin by demanding the passage of hate-crimes legislation and the elimination of racism and violence.

Karen K. Narasaki is executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (www.napalc.org) in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.