40 years ago, Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American, was fatally beaten with a baseball bat on the eve of his wedding. His two white assailants mistook him for Japanese. At the time many feared deindustrialization was robbing America of jobs. That act and the miscarriage of justice that followed (neither assailant spent a single day in jail) marked the birth of the modern day Asian American civil rights movement, according to author and activist Helen Zia.

Today Asian Americans face an even more intense climate of racist hate that is targeting all communities of color as well as Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and involves inter-ethnic and even intra-ethnic violence as well as violence by white supremacists.

At an Ethnic Media Services briefing, May 27, speakers – Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program; Helen Zia, author, activist and former journalist, founding member of the Detroit-based American Citizens for Justice; John C. Yang, President and CEO, Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC); and Lisa Cylar Barrett, Director of Policy, NAACP Legal Defense Fund – explored the rising threat of violence and hate, efforts to build a stronger multi-racial movement of solidarity to address it, and plans to commemorate Chin’s death at a special 40th anniversary in Detroit (June 14-16).

(Above, l-r): Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program; Helen Zia, author, activist and former journalist, founding member of the Detroit-based American Citizens for Justice; John C. Yang, President and CEO, Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC); and Lisa Cylar Barrett, Director of Policy, NAACP Legal Defense Fund. (EMS)

Michael German spoke about the racist violent violence and hate communities of color and others confront today. “One of the reasons why it’s hard to talk about hate crimes in general and specifically anti-Asian hate crimes is that the data that the government collects is so poor. Even though there are five federal hate crimes statutes, the Department of Justice’s policy is to defer the investigation of hate crimes to state local law enforcement even though they know that year in and year out, only about 15 percent, not even usually of police departments even acknowledge that hate crimes occur within their jurisdictions, so there’s a big gap in our knowledge of hate crimes.

“It’s also a little bit difficult to discuss because there are a lot of common misassumptions about hate crimes.

“When I was with the FBI, I worked undercover in white supremacist groups and when people hear hate-crime they typically think of a crime like the mass shooting in Buffalo where you have somebody who is an avowed white supremacist who is committing a crime. They’re against black people you know in Pennsylvania, against Jewish people in Texas, against Hispanic people and they don’t understand that white supremacy is broader than that and racism is much more common in our society and unfortunately, in many ways foundational society.

“If you look at the way anti-Asian hate in the United States has developed over the course of hundreds of years, you see that a lot of the anti-Asian hate is directed more from powerful segments of society rather than the fringe white supremacists that are engaging in so-called extremist talk, and that goes back to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

“Open racism against Asian people, viewing Asian people as a threat to the United States, and examining what’s going on today through the murder of Vincent Chin, is a helpful way to look at it because you didn’t have people who necessarily were wearing clan hoods and were part of a sophisticated white supremacist criminal organization, rather, you had a pervasive environment where it wasn’t extremist talk, it was talk that was on the news every day about how Japan was out competing the United States, and jobs were shifting overseas, and they were stealing our jobs particularly in the auto making centers of the world and our manufacturing base, so that anti-Asian hatred was something that was drummed up through society from positions of power.

“This is what politicians were talking about, this is what the news media was talking about constantly, when really most of that was sensationalist. The Japanese economy was not nearly the size of the U.S. economy, but it was a convenient way for people in power to create a scapegoat.

“The groups that collect this data outside the government show a severe uptick in hate crimes against Asian Americans. Similar rhetoric from government actors talking about the threat that China poses, talking about the pandemic as if it was China’s fault, or in some cases, again this isn’t just extremists on the fringe of our society shaving their heads and putting Nazi tattoos on themselves, this is members of Congress, this is senators who are alleging without evidence, that coronavirus was weaponized by China, and sent to the United States intentionally as a weapon of war,” said German.

Helen Zia, author and veteran journalist, spoke about why 40 years after his murder, Chin’s legacy is so relevant to the issues we are confronting today. “In these past two and a half years, it’s been incredibly intense for Asian Americans who even when the Coronavirus was first identified in 2019 being in China before there was even a single case here in North America, the Asian American communities were feeling the this thing of harassment and violence and so it’s very chilling to look back over 40 years, a hate crime that in the 1980s when a young man named Vincent Chin was killed on the night of his bachelor party.

“What we are trying to remember of that time was that the 1980s were a time of incredible economic crisis in America. We were facing rising gas prices, the 1980s inflation was reaching 20 percent, and there were a couple of oil crises that began in the 1970s, that led to the collapse not only of the auto industry, but the entire manufacturing sector of America.

“That’s when America ceased being a manufacturing-based country and there was incredible structural change the government. At that time, which now people sort of lionize Ronald Reagan, but his whole campaign and his whole administration was based on dismantling the social safety nets, things like unemployment, food stamps, all of those things were part mental health services, the things that today 40 years later, our society is suffering from really began with this dismantling during that period.

“It was a time of incredible crisis and I had been an auto worker in Detroit myself and was laid off during that time in the late 1970s. I stood in unemployment lines with hundreds of thousands of other people who were looking at never finding work again and so it was very clear just how much pain and suffering and misery there was.

“People in the C-suites, the heads of the auto industries, people in the halls of Congress, saying ‘we are at war’ because Japan makes fuel efficient cars and it was a way of bringing people together to scapegoat and blame some external force for the difficulties that were happening internally in America, and that was 40 years ago.

“We can point to many times in history where that’s happened where Asians in America have been blamed for economic crises that happened in the 1800s. It happened throughout the 1900s, and in the 1980s, Japan was blamed. Germany made highly fuel-efficient cars but scapegoating and racism only works when people look different and can be targeted and isolated.

“The thing that made the attack and the hate killing of Vincent Chin even more egregious was when his killers who were two white auto workers who’s who saw him at the bar where he and his friends were celebrating Vincent’s bachelor party and said ‘it’s because of you mother f’s that we’re out of work.’

“These were white auto workers and by the way, neither of them was out of work, they were both fully employed, and in high paying jobs, but they connected the looking at Vincent Chin, who by the way, they did not mistake for being Japanese. His friend said ‘No, no, he’s Chinese,’ and then later they went through the streets of Detroit, stalking him saying let’s get the Chinese. They knew he wasn’t Japanese and this is the part of the anti-Asian hate that it doesn’t matter.

“The fact that his killers were white, I want to point out because the attack itself was egregious enough but when it came time for them to be sentenced, and the killing was witnessed by 70 people, or more, and there was no question that they had violently beaten Vincent’s brains out into the street with a baseball bat, the judge said ‘Oh! these are not the kind of men you sent to jail’ and gave them probation. This is in the city of Detroit was just outrageous because there was no question in anybody’s minds, had the killers been black, had they been Asian, had they not been white, they would have gone to jail for a very long time.

“The sense of injustice was great and that’s where I want to go with talking about the real legacy of the Vincent Chin story is that injustice.

“In the midst of great hate toward Asian Americans, hate spills over. People came together, we saw the birth of a civil rights movement. Asian Americans came together to stand up and say ‘this is not the democracy we’re supposed to be standing up for’ and Asian Americans came together with Black Americans, Arab Americans, people of all walks of life and faiths, and it was really a multi-racial, multi-class, interfaith solidarity movement to stand up against hate, and to stand up for justice and equality of all people. That’s one of the things we’re trying to commemorate,” said Zia. (Interested readers can visit vincentchin.org).

“Hate crimes and how the criminal justice system deals with them was almost always identical. In both cases, Vincent Chin and Navroz Modi, the criminal justice system, the law enforcement, the people right on the ground, dismiss any notion that it could be race related even though when Modi was killed in Jersey City, there was a group called the Dot Busters whose mission was to eliminate all quote ‘Hindus’ from the region and some of the attackers were part of that group as well, but what happens is they don’t even get investigated. 15 percent of law enforcement even acknowledges that there might be hate crimes when it comes to Asians in America, the default is that Asians do not experience racism, there is no discrimination against Asian Americans.

“In 1989, in Stockton, Calif., the very day they were killed, the police chief said ‘Oh! this has nothing to do with race’ even though 80 percent of the students at that school were Southeast Asian children. Later the community demanded a separate investigation by the state and they found that the killer was tied to white supremacist organizations, but the default over and over again whether it was Vincent Chin or Navroz Modi, or a you know a long list of other people who have been killed including Atlanta, and the women who were stalked and killed, the immediate response is ‘this has nothing to do with race’ and so they don’t get listed as potential hate crimes. They don’t get investigated that way,” said Zia.

John C. Yang, president and CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, spoke about efforts to expand cross-racial, cross-ethnic solidarity across the civil rights and social justice organizations in the United States.

“I don’t think it’s lost on any of us that yes, we in the Asian American community are seeing a huge spike in anti-Asian violence, but this is at the same time we have seen the murders of George Floyd, of Brianna Taylor, of Ammar Arbory, and tragically of ten African Americans in Buffalo, just recently. It is at the same time we have seen Charlottesville, the same time that we have seen the insurrection at the Capitol, where we saw so many Confederate flags flying in the Capital. I don’t think that’s lost on any of our communities, and that is one place where we have come together and frankly, part of it is that the media drives this in both a good and a bad way.

“When we talk about what the media can do, I would ask the media to get those facts out there that who is attacking us is not the African American community, more to the point especially for the Asian American media, one of the things unfortunately I see within my community sometimes is why aren’t African Americans standing up for us; why aren’t Hispanic Americans standing up for us; but unfortunately my community, I will admit sometimes don’t ask the question, why aren’t White Americans standing up for us?” said Yang.

Lisa Cylar Barrett, Director, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, had a similar message, “We have allowed the narrative to be unchecked for so long.

“The hateful and hate-filled and dangerous narrative that was coming from the highest offices in this country has gone largely un-checked, so we’ve had folks in political offices, folks in media stations, corporate representatives repeating, iterating, and creating an environment where misinformation and disinformation really has become normalized.

“It’s repeated and recycled, and in some instances, glamorized, and we have to do more to push back against that narrative,” said Barrett.