Bigotry’s Expanding Umbrella

In 1982 Vincent Chin was a young man with a future. But on June 23 of that year the 27-year-old Chinese-American was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two unemployed Detroit auto workers. They mistook Chin for someone of Japanese descent and blamed him for their joblessness and the decline of the U.S. auto industry.

In the decade since his death, assaults against Asian-Americans have been on the rise across the country. Rarely do these verbal attacks, beatings or killings receive national or even much local attention. For instance, it was not broadly publicized when Ming Lai (Jim) Loo, a Chinese-American, was fatally pistol-whipped in Raleigh, N.C., in 1989 by two white brothers who said they did not like Vietnamese. The killing was eerily reminiscent of the Chin case.

The slaying of Chin galvanized Asian-Americans, the fastest-growing U.S. minority group, into a new consciousness of their rights. This week, Asian-Americans are commemorating his death.

After Chin’s assailants were convicted but only fined and given probation, outrage from Asian-Americans led to a Justice Department investigation and a subsequent trial. It was the first case in which the federal government prosecuted the murder of an Asian under civil rights laws.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights notes the increasing racist assaults, and L.A. County reports that Asian-Americans were the third most common victims of hate crimes in the county in 1991. Such bigotry is inexcusable.