During the 1970s and 80s, as the Japanese automobile manufacturing industry took off, American car companies suffered as they faced competition from cars that were cheaper and more efficient. The Big Three car corporations consisting of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler laid off thousands of workers. Anti-Japanese sentiment grew as many Americans blamed the Japanese for their job losses. Often this animosity resulted in violence.
On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American, was celebrating his bachelor party with friends at a bar in Detroit in advance of his wedding date set for June 27. Mistaking Vincent for Japanese descent, Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens instigated a fight by declaring, "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work!” to Vincent and his friends.
After being thrown out of the bar, Vincent was held by Ebens’s stepson Michael Nitz, who was a laid-off autoworker, and beaten by Ebens with a baseball bat until Vincent’s head cracked open. A policeman who witnessed the beating said Ebens was swinging the bat like he was swinging "for a home run". Vincent eventually died in a hospital days before his wedding after being in a coma for four days.
The two were arrested by onlooking police and their initial charges of second-degree murder were brought down to manslaughter. They served no jail time, were given three years' probation, and fined $3,750. After multiple cases and a retrial Ebens was even cleared of all charges in 1987. Lily Chin, Vincent’s mother who moved back to China for sometime to avoid the memory of the tragedy stated: "What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail, maybe for their whole lives... Something is wrong with this country."
Chin’s case has been cited by many Asian Americans to support the idea that they are seen as not fully citizens or "perpetual foreigners" compared to "real" Americans.
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This was an interesting blog post to read because I've briefly learned about the murder of Vincent Chin in the context of Asian American history but I had not known about the aspect of the incident that connected to the automobile industry. Chin's story was a terrible tragedy motived by racism and intense nativist attitudes during a time when the economy/jobs were also fueling the fire. While the downturns in the economy, foreign competing companies, and other factors that we learned about were to blame for the layoffs and decline in the automobile industry, clearly people had other prejudices that dictated their choices. In addition, I found out that during the trial of Chin's murderers, the Civil Rights Act was used for the first time in a case involving an Asian American victim. The case because "a rallying cry for stronger federal hate crime legislation," showing that at least people realized something like this should never happen again.
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This is such an interesting and tragic story. It's so devastating that Vincent died just days before his wedding and that his murderers were given extremely light sentences. Despite the attempts of the previous decades, this case goes to show that there was still plenty of dangerous racism in the country. I had no idea that the growth of the Japanese economy, especially the automobile industry, triggered such intense anti-Japanese sentiment in the US. However, it does make sense that some Americans were so willing to place the blame on them because Asian discrimination had been already been engraved in American culture for decades.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a sad and tragic story but I'm so glad someone decided to write a blog on this topic because it's very important. This root issue of job jealousy when it comes to the white community and any other minority can be seen all throughout American history. This has lead to countless tragic stories and although this issue came from also a misidentification and generalization the root issue still remains. African American business owners used to ge get threatened and attacked when their business started doing better than the hite owned business, just like what happened with the Japanese automobiles. This pattern is recurring throughout history but nonetheless tragic and awful.
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