Black people are unjustly treated by our judicial system. The justice system often fails to live up to the principles it was founded on, the disproportionate prison sentences among African Americans and white Americans is proof of that. To be black in America is, without a doubt, a tough job. You either hit the ground running, or you get left behind. Even if one did disagree that blacks are unfairly systemically handled, they cannot ignore that many disagree with them. Names like Oscar Grant, Mike Brown and Tamir Rice, unarmed young black males murdered by police officers, are now synonymous with unjust rulings. We know their names; in fact, there’s an entire movement dedicated to African-American women who were murdered unjustly, such as Alexia Christian and Mya Hall. These names stay with me. I make it a point to not forget them, and then one day someone mentioned a name I had never heard before – a name that few speak about – Vincent Jen Chin.
Vincent Chin was a man on the move. Chin had a steady job as a industrialist draftsman for an automobile company, and at 27, was about to get married. He was murdered by Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, at his bachelor’s party, a week before his big day. The murder had taken place in Detroit, Michigan, at Fancy Pants, a strip club in 1982. Chin, along with Ebens and Nitz, were kicked out for fighting. Ebens, at the time, was a superintendent at a Chrysler plant. The American automobile industry became more competitive in the '80s due to Japan's booming automobile market. Ebens accused Chin, who was actually Chinese, of taking American jobs allegedly saying, "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work!”
It is important to note that both Ebens and Nitz are white males; the violence that occurred after their verbal confrontation was racially charged. This was a hate crime. Once outside the club, Chin, along with his murderers, exchanged heated words but parted ways. Nitz and Ebens then tracked Chin down and found him in a McDonald's. Nitz held Chin in a bear hug while Ebens hit him with a bat four times, cracking his skull, which resulted in Chin dying four days later.
When I read that Chin had died, I was upset, but for some naive or maybe optimistic reason, I thought the next paragraph was going to say how long it had took the jury to give Nitz and Ebens life sentences. I never read that paragraph. I kept reading and reading, but it never came. Instead words like “jail,” “probation” and “fine” appeared. Nitz and Ebens were charged with second degree manslaughter, fined $3,000 and placed on probation for three years. If anyone had any doubt that white Americans experience white privilege or that white supremacy is a rampant disease that courses through the veins of our nation, it should be erased once examining this case. When Charles Kauffman, the judge overseeing the case, was asked why Nitz and Ebens were not given harsher sentences, he stated, “These weren't the kind of men you send to jail...You don't make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal.”
The resistance to hold white men accountable for the heinous acts in our society is nothing new in our country, in fact, most of the white men we praise and learn about in our history classes are often problematic individuals. Our country is so quick to accuse a brown man doing math on a plane for being a terrorist but not a white man for digging in his backpack at a school. Odds are, when you hear about a school shooter or any shooter in America, he is most likely a white man, between the ages of 18-49. The media never talks about mass shooting demographics for the same reason I didn’t hear about Chin’s case until I was 21: It confronts white supremacy.
This case went to federal court on the grounds of it being a hate crime, but justice was not served due to reasonable doubt because both parties were intoxicated and a futile witness. Nitz was ordered to pay $50,000 to Chin’s estate, while Ebens was ordered to pay $1.5 million due to unlawful death. Both were acquitted. Make no mistake, money does not resolve the issue at hand, it simply ignored the bigger issue at hand: People of color are treated like second class citizens in a country they helped build.
Chin’s case sound a lot like Emmett Till’s case. Till was a 12-year-old black child murdered in 1955 by two white men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, who were later acquitted. Though it’s always the same story over and over with our justice system, I did not know the Asian community had an Emmett Till, as well.
It is important to not forget Chin’s story because it would further the lack of voices speaking about the oppression Asian Americans face in our nation. Vincent Chin’s legacy remains intact, but younger generations don’t seem to remember him. NBC recently released a video asking people if they knew who Vincent Chin was, many of its participants did not know. After having conversations with many of my peers both at UC Santa Cruz and home in LA, I found that several, if not all, were also confused about who he was. We cannot forget Vincent Chin or his legacy.
Chin should not only be remembered for starting a political, economic and social revolution for Asian Americans, but as an Asian American who broke the model minority stereotype, as well. Chin spoke out against Ebens and Nitz the night he died, and he did not fit the model minority stereotype, a concept well known today. Moreover, Chin is not just a landmark that sparked political and social changes in the Asian American community. He should be viewed as a reminder that white supremacy does not just affect just one community
Unjust acts of killings on people of color are always relevant. We all have chapters in the book of tragedy about people of color; Vincent Chin has a chapter. Injustice has no time limit. We should talk about the murders that occurred two days ago and murders that took place 34 years ago like Vincent Chin’s.
