ASIAN HATE 1983: “THE BRUTAL MURDER OF VINCENT CHIN“

On June 19, 1982, a Chinese American man named Vincent Chin went with friends to a strip club in Detroit to celebrate his upcoming wedding. That night, two white men who apparently thought Chin was Japanese beat him to death. At the killers’ trial, the men each received a $3,000 fine and zero prison time. The light sentencing sparked national outrage and fueled a movement for pan-Asian American rights. Chin was born in China’s Guangdong province and grew up in Detroit with his adoptive Chinese American parents. By the summer of 1982, he was 27 years old and working in computer graphics, and his hometown—once known as an automotive manufacturing capital—was in decline. Many U.S. autoworkers blamed this decline on Japanese car manufacturers. On the night Chin went out with his friends, 43-year-old Chrysler foreman Ronald Ebens and his 22-year-old stepson Michael Nitz, who’d lost his job at Chrysler, were also at the club. According to testimony, a dispute started between the groups of men ove