Vincent Chin was not an activist, not an educator, not an espoused scholar or entrepreneur, but on the edge of life-- the night of his bachelor party-- when he was brutally beaten by two men on a Detroit street in June of 1982. He was twenty-seven years old, and he was Chinese, not Japanese, as his attackers assumed: one was Ronald Ebens, who had lost his job at Chrysler two years prior, and the other his stepson, Michael Nitz. The details of the altercation in the gentlemen's club are transcribed elsewhere, and may forever remain sketchy: who insulted who first, and who threw the first punch, may remain beyond our exact knowing. What is known is who was left beaten to death in the street.
Curtis Chin-- no relation-- has had a Hollywood career, including as a writer on a few seasons of Cheers spinoff Norm, before a standing gig as a producer's assistant on a short-lived ABC sitcom. He and his family started the Asian-Pacific Americans for Progress In 2009, Chin compiled a film about Vincent's death, and the legacy of the family's loss, not to explain the circumstances of Vincent's attackers, or the legal wrangling that has lingered long into this century and this decade. According to the film's website-- where one may purchase the DVD, as well as t-shirts and buttons-- "When the judge fined the [Vincent's] killers a mere $3,000 and three years of probation, Asian Americans around the country galvanized to form a real community and movement." Besides much visceral and emotional footage of Vincent Chin's mother, the film provides important social and economic context for the savage death: beyond 'buy-American-or-apply-for-Japanese-welfare' sentiments at work in the Motor City in the early 1980s, Curtis Chin's film includes evidence of such, in the form of a violent videotape, of a UAW-sponsored "smash-an-import" contest on a Detroit street, in which a Toyota is smashed by union assembly line workers wielding sledgehammers. Tear-jerking footage of a graveside mother, and of a mournful remembrance by a friend ('thank you, Vincent, for your unintended gift') provides sentimental, if not social, context for Vincent's gruesome death.
Without drawing attention to the 25th anniversary of the murder, a recent article by Frank Wu appeared in the New York Times, declaring the importance of and providing modern context for Vincent Chin's death: "An assimilated son of Chinese immigrants somehow came to be identified with Japanese automakers. (That Asian-Americans made up much of the engineering force at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler seems not to have occurred to the attackers)." ("Why Vincent Chin Matters," June 22, 2012). The extent to which GM, Ford, and other uber-patriotic corporations may today acknowledge the role they played in Detroit and other communities, during the first wave of cheap and efficient gasoline vehicles being imported from Japan, doesn't much matter to Curtis Chin. Recently a featured speaker at Union Institute and University's Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies program, Curtis stood avowedly beside his film's thesis, over three years after its official release: Vincent Chin's death was the catalyst for Asian-Americans (there had been no such designation, prior to Vincent's murder, he told the adoring-or-asleep doctoral crowd, crammed inside the ballroom of a Marriott in Cincinnati), an event that "awakened a people and ignited the Asian American civil rights movement."
While I understand and acknowledge the film's point -- that a horrific act surely galvanized a nationwide community that had not been galvanized before-- I was interested most in Curtis Chin's approach to 21st century racial and social harmony: how and why can we work to better prevent such hate crimes? If economic disparity is as bad as it sounds, and truly does extend beyond racial categories, why aren't poor people interested in beating up rich people? When asked what happened to Vincent Chin's attackers, and the judge who issued the lienent punishment, I hoped for more than I heard. I learned later (according to Wikipedia) that Ronald Ebens attempted and failed at a career in investments; he is a supposed real estate broker somewhere in Nevada. He and Michael Nitz were later sentenced to pay financial restitution to the Chin family. I don't know if Curtis provided these details; I had to leave the Marriott when he began his answer to the inquiry with, "well, fortunately, the judge died."
However casual and hyperbolic his remark, however deep his pain remains his mourning, Curtis Chin's naming of another's death as fortunate seemed to stoop below the expectations of ethical behavior wrought by his film.
The official website for "Vincent Who?" may be found at http://www.vincentwhofilm.com/
The Wikipedia entry for "Death of Vincent Chin" compiles many first-hand accounts of the events that took place in Detroit in June of 1982: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Vincent_Chin
Curtis Chin-- no relation-- has had a Hollywood career, including as a writer on a few seasons of Cheers spinoff Norm, before a standing gig as a producer's assistant on a short-lived ABC sitcom. He and his family started the Asian-Pacific Americans for Progress In 2009, Chin compiled a film about Vincent's death, and the legacy of the family's loss, not to explain the circumstances of Vincent's attackers, or the legal wrangling that has lingered long into this century and this decade. According to the film's website-- where one may purchase the DVD, as well as t-shirts and buttons-- "When the judge fined the [Vincent's] killers a mere $3,000 and three years of probation, Asian Americans around the country galvanized to form a real community and movement." Besides much visceral and emotional footage of Vincent Chin's mother, the film provides important social and economic context for the savage death: beyond 'buy-American-or-apply-for-Japanese-welfare' sentiments at work in the Motor City in the early 1980s, Curtis Chin's film includes evidence of such, in the form of a violent videotape, of a UAW-sponsored "smash-an-import" contest on a Detroit street, in which a Toyota is smashed by union assembly line workers wielding sledgehammers. Tear-jerking footage of a graveside mother, and of a mournful remembrance by a friend ('thank you, Vincent, for your unintended gift') provides sentimental, if not social, context for Vincent's gruesome death.
Without drawing attention to the 25th anniversary of the murder, a recent article by Frank Wu appeared in the New York Times, declaring the importance of and providing modern context for Vincent Chin's death: "An assimilated son of Chinese immigrants somehow came to be identified with Japanese automakers. (That Asian-Americans made up much of the engineering force at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler seems not to have occurred to the attackers)." ("Why Vincent Chin Matters," June 22, 2012). The extent to which GM, Ford, and other uber-patriotic corporations may today acknowledge the role they played in Detroit and other communities, during the first wave of cheap and efficient gasoline vehicles being imported from Japan, doesn't much matter to Curtis Chin. Recently a featured speaker at Union Institute and University's Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies program, Curtis stood avowedly beside his film's thesis, over three years after its official release: Vincent Chin's death was the catalyst for Asian-Americans (there had been no such designation, prior to Vincent's murder, he told the adoring-or-asleep doctoral crowd, crammed inside the ballroom of a Marriott in Cincinnati), an event that "awakened a people and ignited the Asian American civil rights movement."
While I understand and acknowledge the film's point -- that a horrific act surely galvanized a nationwide community that had not been galvanized before-- I was interested most in Curtis Chin's approach to 21st century racial and social harmony: how and why can we work to better prevent such hate crimes? If economic disparity is as bad as it sounds, and truly does extend beyond racial categories, why aren't poor people interested in beating up rich people? When asked what happened to Vincent Chin's attackers, and the judge who issued the lienent punishment, I hoped for more than I heard. I learned later (according to Wikipedia) that Ronald Ebens attempted and failed at a career in investments; he is a supposed real estate broker somewhere in Nevada. He and Michael Nitz were later sentenced to pay financial restitution to the Chin family. I don't know if Curtis provided these details; I had to leave the Marriott when he began his answer to the inquiry with, "well, fortunately, the judge died."
However casual and hyperbolic his remark, however deep his pain remains his mourning, Curtis Chin's naming of another's death as fortunate seemed to stoop below the expectations of ethical behavior wrought by his film.
The official website for "Vincent Who?" may be found at http://www.vincentwhofilm.com/
The Wikipedia entry for "Death of Vincent Chin" compiles many first-hand accounts of the events that took place in Detroit in June of 1982: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Vincent_Chin
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