Forty years ago, Vincent Chin was murdered. Forty years on, his memory remains both in remembrance and in chilling parallel to hate crimes today.
In 1982, Chin was approached by two men in the city of Detroit where an altercation broke out and Chin was left mortally wounded by a baseball bat. The assailants had attacked China because he was Asian and blamed him for a sweep of layoffs in the automotive industry due to the rise of Japanese imports. Chin was not Japanese, but rather an immigrant from China. But this didn’t matter to his attackers, who beat him with the savageness of a single-minded view.
You would think that after four decades, the memory of Vincent Chin would serve as a warning against blind prejudice against Asian Americans and the consequences it brings, but this has not been the case. The start of the new decade has been wrought with anti-Asian hate crimes brought on by rhetoric surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many Americans, including the previous administration, had used terms such as “kung-flu” and “Chinese Virus” that portrayed the Asian continent as a source to be feared and hated. This of course fueled a racist generalization of all Asian-Americans and a rise in violence against random people all because of their ethnic origin.
According to the Department of Justice, more than 8,000 bias-based offenses occurred against Asian Americans in 2020— two of these incidents involving old men who were killed after being assaulted in public; along with the shooting of three Asian women in KoreaTown, Dallas.
Errors such as these are why it is more important than ever to remember Vincent Chin’s memory, not because it was a problem of the past– but because it is a concern for our present and future as a nation. Our country bears as much pride for itself just as quickly as it forgets history and allows it to repeat once more. Asian Americans are not to blame for the pandemic nor are they to be discriminated against and if we allow such troubles to repeat, then we will never heal.
This pandemic has brought us apart in many ways, but it is with shame and no surprise that it can tear at such fragile threads as the underlying racism in this country.
Remembering Vincent Chin is to act towards a better and more just America where rhetoric falters to divide us. As vaccinations return us to a somewhat normal life, we must ask ourselves– will this anti Asian American sentiment go away or was it always there to begin with?
This blog post is part of the CIMA Law Group blog. If you are located in Arizona and are seeking legal services, CIMA Law Group specializes in Immigration Law, Criminal Defense, Personal Injury, and Government Relations.
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