MDCR - Statement from MAPAAC Chair Jamie Hsu on the Vincent Chin Murder Case

From the Michigan Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission:

Statement from MAPAAC Chair Jamie Hsu on the Vincent Chin Murder Case
Contact: Vicki Levengood 517-241-7978 Agency: Civil Rights

As a metro Detroiter, an Asian American, and Chair of the Michigan Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission, I am compelled to correct Neal Rubin's understanding of the record in the 1982 Vincent Chin baseball bat murder case. When Ebens and Nitz set out to find Vincent Chin after a melee in the Fancy Pants bar, it does not appear that the assailants cared what sort of Asian American Vincent Chin was – but they were undoubtedly anti-Asian. Chin was called "nip" and "Chink" and other epithets. Ebens and Nitz paid Jimmy Perry $20 to find "those Chinese guys." There is no doubt in our collective minds that if Vincent Chin was white, he would be alive today. The case record, complete with the racial epithets, clearly establishes a racial animus on the part of the defendants. To re-characterize the killing of Vincent Chin as simply a bar room brawl and not a hate incident 32 years after the case is revisionist history.

At the Michigan Asian Pacific Affairs Commission, we both practice and advocate for racial understanding and tolerance, and laud the contributions of Asian Pacific Americans to the betterment of the state of Michigan. While we on the commission and in the APA community are focused on these positive efforts, we cannot forget that the civil rights event that brought so many of us together was the need to seek justice for Vincent Chin at a time when others were unwilling to face the reality that such hate lives among us. Vincent did not deserve to die at the age of 27, and neither history nor his memory should be subject to this sort of revisionism now.

Jamie Hsu, Chair, Michigan Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission

MDCR - Statement from MAPAAC Chair Jamie Hsu on the Vincent Chin Murder Case

The Case Against Vincent Chin | Frank H. Wu

Frank Wu's excellent response against Neal Rubin's aggravating revisionist history in Detroit News. Get all your facts straight here:

The Case Against Vincent Chin | Frank H. Wu

Asian American Journalists Association – AAJA seeks retraction from The Detroit News for Neal Rubin’s column revisiting the Vincent Chin murder case

Yes! The Asian American Journalists Association holding the Detroit News to journalistic standards.

Asian American Journalists Association – AAJA seeks retraction from The Detroit News for Neal Rubin’s column revisiting the Vincent Chin murder case

Reporter blames Vincent Chin for his own murder? | @nealrubin_dn | Reappropriate

Jenn Fang's great response to Neal Rubin's ridiculous article in Detroit News:

Reporter blames Vincent Chin for his own murder? | @nealrubin_dn | Reappropriate

Response to: What we all assume we know about the Vincent Chin case probably isn't so | The Detroit News

I hesitate to give his article any more clicks, but here is my initial respose:

Hey Neal Rubin, According to the juror interviewed in the Academy Award winning documentary, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" the jurors in Detroit federal trial found Ms. Racine Colwell to be THE most credible witness in the whole trial. You also forgot about the part where Ebens and Nitz paid Jimmy Perry $20 to help them hunt down "the Chinaman," before finally finding him at the McDonald's. Yes, Ronald Ebens was employed at Chrysler at the time (and Nitz had recently been laid off)--that was one of the reasons cited by Judge Kaufmann for the lenient sentence, that having a job gives one license to kill--but that does not mean that this case still was not all about race. Rather than relying on random third-hand information for a convoluted argument, you should do some research before launching your revisionist history and irresponsible journalism. The Michigan State Bar has deemed this case a Michigan Legal Milestone. You should talk to them.
--Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Here is Neal Rubin's terrible article in The Detroit News (Note: the content has been changed several times since first publication April 29, 2014, 1:03 am ish without any editor's notes regarding the updates):
What we all assume we know about the Vincent Chin case probably isn't so | The Detroit News

And here is the almost as terrible article by Charlie LeDuff in the New York Times that started it all with a careless offhand comment re the Vincent Chin case:
A Beating in Detroit - NYTimes.com

Note: This article has been updated to include links to the two original articles that started all this.