Race integral part of Vincent Chin case | The Detroit News

per American Citizens for Justice, "The Detroit News agreed to have a rebuttal article following Neal Rubin's article after discussions with AAJA National, and invited Frank Wu to write an article. Here it is in today's Detroit News. http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140506/LIFESTYLE/305060026/Race-integral-part-Vincent-Chin-case

Race integral part of Vincent Chin case | The Detroit News

UNITY Statement on Neal Rubin column in Detroit News

UNITY Statement from David Steinberg, the UNITY president, on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aajamain/permalink/10152457570541474/

UNITY: Journalists for Diversity is disappointed in The Detroit News' decision to publish Neal Rubin’s column arguing that the beating death of Vincent Chin in 1982 had nothing to do with race.

Rubin constructed his argument on a shoddy foundation of poorly reported facts. Most notably, he failed to even mention that Chin’s assailants used racial epithets. UNITY is also troubled by Rubin’s dismissal of a woman’s testimony because she was a stripper.

The Detroit News and Neal Rubin owe its readers an apology and an explanation about why changes were made to the column.

Roundup of responses to Neal Rubin's terrible article in Detroit News dissing Vincent Chin case

I've been keeping a roundup of responses to Neal Rubin's terrible article in Detroit News trying to rewrite the Vincent Chin case here at RememberingVincentChin.com, but I wanted to coallate all the responses into one post as well. Here is a summary, with the best articles on top.

Truly beautiful analysis and convo from the great Jeff Yang with quotes from Helen Zia, Renee Tajima-Peña Curtis Chin and Neal Rubin too about Neal Rubin Detroit News article in context of larger issue of Bundy and Sterling and wishing racism would just go away already.
Pretending racism doesn’t exist won’t make it go away - Quartz

Powerful statement from Stewart Kwoh at Asian Americans Advancing Justice LA:
Detroit News Columnist Trivializes Vincent Chin's Murder and Its Legacy | Asian Americans Advancing Justice - LA

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

From Jenn Fang at Reappropriate, updated with images of the almost original article vs what it says now (several changes were made after the original time of publication at April 29 1:03 am ish without any editorial note about the updates--bad journalistic practice).
Reporter blames Vincent Chin for his own murder? | @nealrubin_dn | Reappropriate

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

From Emil Guillermo on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) blog re that Neal Rubin article in The Detroit News...
Blog: Happy Asian American Pacific Islander Month...and BTW, the race aspects of the murder of Vincent Chin are no urban myth - AALDEF

From the Michigan Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission Chair Jamie Hsu on the Vincent Chin Murder Case
MDCR - Statement from MAPAAC Chair Jamie Hsu on the Vincent Chin Murder Case

from Julianne Hing in Colorlines on Neal Rubin's article in Detroit News:
Detroit News Columnist Rewrites History of Vincent Chin Hate Crime - COLORLINES

from Steve Han at KoreAm:
Detroit News Reporter Downplays Vincent Chin Murder As A Bar Brawl Gone Awry « KoreAm Journal – Korean America's Premier Magazine

Roundup from Randall Yip in AsAmNews:
AsAm News | Asian Americans react with outrage at attempt to revise Asian American history

And 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


UPDATED with two new articles:

Frank Wu response in Detroit News
Race integral part of Vincent Chin case | The Detroit News

UNITY Statement from David Steinberg, the UNITY president, on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aajamain/permalink/10152457570541474/

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

From Jenn Fang at Reappropriate again, but updated with images of the almost original article vs what it says now (several changes were made after the original time of publication at April 29 1:03 am ish without any editorial note about the updates--bad journalistic practice).

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

AsAm News | Asian Americans react with outrage at attempt to revise Asian American history

Roundup from Randall Yip in AsAmNews:

AsAm News | Asian Americans react with outrage at attempt to revise Asian American history

Pretending racism doesn’t exist won’t make it go away - Quartz

Truly beautiful analysis and convo from the great Jeff Yang with quotes from Helen Zia, Renee Tajima-Peña Curtis Chin and Neal Rubin too about Neal Rubin Detroit News article in context of larger issue of Bundy and Sterling and wishing racism would just go away already.

“Chin didn’t fit anyone’s stereotype of a passive, emasculated Asian male who was going to turn the other cheek,” says Tajima-Peña. “He was raised in Detroit, a guy who was comfortable inside and outside the Chinese community. He played football in high school. His friends told me that he wasn’t the type to take any shit. And here he was in a fight with two white guys who outnumbered and outweighed him….What was going on inside Ebens’s head while Chin, an Asian American guy, was kicking his butt?”

What Tajima-Peña points out is that Chin’s primary provocation was unapologetically defending his identity, that is to say, fighting for his right to be an Asian guy in a decidedly “non-Asian” context. And while I won’t try to guess what was going on inside Ebens’s head, as someone who’s encountered similar situations, I have a pretty good idea what was going on inside of Chin’s.

If he’d laughed off Ebens’s comments or ignored them, he might be alive today. But given the toxic atmosphere of Detroit in the ’80s, it was certainly not the first time he’d heard racial slurs—the environment he lived in was saturated with anti-Japanese rhetoric. So maybe he’d let such callouts slide before and chosen to shake his head, to turn away, to move on. Not that day. Not this time. Celebrating his impending marriage, in a rowdy environment, a little bit drunk, Chin decided he wouldn’t let things pass.

And for that, he paid with his life—a life that, to Judge Charles Kaufman, was worth less than the down payment on a new Chrysler.

Pretending racism doesn’t exist won’t make it go away - Quartz

Detroit News Reporter Downplays Vincent Chin Murder As A Bar Brawl Gone Awry « KoreAm Journal – Korean America's Premier Magazine

from Steve Han at KoreAm:

A local columnist’s attempt at downplaying the severity of the alleged race-motivated murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 is eliciting an angry reaction from the Asian American community.

Detroit News Reporter Downplays Vincent Chin Murder As A Bar Brawl Gone Awry « KoreAm Journal – Korean America's Premier Magazine

Detroit News Columnist Rewrites History of Vincent Chin Hate Crime - COLORLINES

from Julianne Hing in Colorlines on Neal Rubin's article in Detroit News:

Rubin’s version of the story is a serious challenge not just to popular understandings of an already controversial hate crime case, but also a real threat to closely protected narratives of Asian-American history. He should have known that wading into the debate with such an incendiary revision would require more diligent sourcing.

Detroit News Columnist Rewrites History of Vincent Chin Hate Crime - COLORLINES

Blog: Happy Asian American Pacific Islander Month...and BTW, the race aspects of the murder of Vincent Chin are no urban myth - AALDEF

From Emil Guillermo on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) blog re that Neal Rubin article in The Detroit News...

But Rubin offers up nothing new. He doesn't interview any principals in the matter who can credibly counter the "urban myth" he feels must be debunked.

His source was a reporter turned journalism professor who covered the trial. And Rubin chooses to discredit the testimony of a stripper, but not because her statements were baseless, but because he can sex up his column by saying she entered the courtroom bottomless.

End result: Nothing is proven. Rubin writes a column in a lame attempt to diminish the hate behind the murder of Chin. And in doing so, he has drawn the ire of many Asian Americans.

Blog: Happy Asian American Pacific Islander Month...and BTW, the race aspects of the murder of Vincent Chin are no urban myth - AALDEF

Detroit News Columnist Trivializes Vincent Chin's Murder and Its Legacy | Asian Americans Advancing Justice - LA

powerful statement from Stewart Kwoh at Asian Americans Advancing Justice LA:

His effort to correct the historical record would be more persuasive had he bothered to interview any of the individuals directly involved in either the initial criminal trial or the subsequent federal civil rights trial – including me (I served as the only out-of-town counsel to American Citizens for Justice, the Detroit-area group fighting for justice for Chin).

I would have been able to tell him that our investigations identified a number of dancers who witnessed the racial epithets, all of whom provided testimony that was used in the first federal civil rights prosecution. (Rubin’s article names only one dancer.) Their accounts, as well as other eyewitnesses’, also indicated that Chin’s killers exhibited aggressively violent behavior, both inside and outside the bar. Rubin’s claim that Chin was the aggressor (“Outside, Chin attempted to prolong the fight”) is therefore hard to believe.

Most damningly, Rubin gives short shrift to the fact that the first federal civil rights trial, tried in a Detroit court, with a Detroit jury, resulted in a conviction of one of Chin’s two murderers. The verdict was overturned on a technicality and a retrial was conducted, far away from Detroit, in front of an all-white jury in Cincinnati that absolved the killer. A more credible attempt at reexamining this case would have discussed these facts in greater detail.

Rubin’s own biases are suggested when, in mentioning that Chin and his murderers had been drinking, he provides a blood alcohol reading only for Chin. Why? Were the statistics not available for the perpetrators? Did Rubin even attempt to find out? Unlikely, because finding out may have undermined the narrative that he presents as the real story: that a drunken, out-of-control Chin brought his death upon himself.

Detroit News Columnist Trivializes Vincent Chin's Murder and Its Legacy | Asian Americans Advancing Justice - LA