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It’s Impossible to See Racism Toward Asian Americans Right Now and Not Think of Vincent Chin
In the face of coronavirus, people are resorting to the same bigoted attacks that led to Chin’s murder in Detroit 38 years ago
In 1982, Japan’s growing success in the automobile industry left U.S. companies with declining opportunities. The United States was struggling, still traumatized from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Some people sought a scapegoat.
That summer, Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese American draftsman, was murdered in Detroit. His killers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, stalked him following a spat in a night club, where Chin had been celebrating his bachelor party with some friends. Ebens allegedly incited the incident by shouting at Chin, “It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work!” About 20 minutes later, the two men found Chin at a McDonald’s. Nitz, who had recently been laid off, held Chin while Ebens, a Chrysler plant supervisor, bludgeoned him with a baseball bat. Chin, whose skull was cracked open from the trauma, passed away after four days in a coma. The two men either didn’t know or didn’t care that Chin wasn’t Japanese—he was of Chinese descent.
Now, 38 years later, the coronavirus pandemic feels newly apocalyptic. Covid-19 has sowed the seeds of distrust among many Americans, not just of their government or the stock market, but of China and, by extension, of anyone of East Asian descent.
In order for us to quell anti-Asian narratives, we first must reflect on how shallow our collective understanding is, not only of Asian people themselves, but of the nature of violence toward them.
Over the past few weeks, a storm of assaults and general abuse toward East Asian people in multicultural countries have been reported to police and published by the press. The New York Times ran a piece last week generally covering such incidences of racism. The cases pile up: a Chinese woman who was spat upon in San Francisco, a teenager from San Fernando Valley who was violently bullied, a New York City…
