Vincent Jen Chin (Chinese: 陳果仁; May 18, 1955 – June 23, 1982) was an American draftsman of Chinese descent who was killed in a racially motivated assault by two white men, Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens and his stepson, laid-off autoworker Michael Nitz. Ebens and Nitz assailed Chin following a brawl that took place at a strip club in Highland Park, Michigan, where Chin had been celebrating his bachelor party with friends in advance of his upcoming wedding. Against the backdrop of high anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States at the time – known as "Japan bashing" – they had assumed that Chin was Japanese, and a witness described them using anti-Asian racial slurs as they attacked him, ultimately beating him to death.
Although accounts vary, the men were expelled from the club following a physical altercation. Ebens and Nitz eventually found Chin in front of a Highland Park McDonald's. There, Nitz held Chin down while Ebens repeatedly bashed him on the head with a baseball bat. Chin was taken to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where he died of his injuries four days later. In their first trial, Ebens and Nitz accepted a plea bargain to reduce the charges from second-degree murder to manslaughter.
Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Charles Kaufman sentenced Ebens and Nitz to three years probation and a $3,000 fine, but no jail time. Explaining his rationale, Kaufman said that Ebens and Nitz "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." Described by the president of the Detroit Chinese Welfare Council as a "$3,000 license to kill", the lenient sentence led to an uproar from Asian Americans and spurred the community into activism. The advocacy group American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) was formed to protest the sentencing. The case has since been viewed as a critical turning point for Asian American civil rights engagement and a rallying cry for stronger federal hate crime legislation.
Background
Vincent Chin was born on May 18, 1955, in Guangdong province, Mainland China. He was the only child of Bing Hing "David" Chin (a.k.a. C.W. Hing) and Lily Chin (née Yee). Chin's father earned the right to bring a Chinese bride into the United States through his service in World War II. After Lily suffered a miscarriage in 1949 and was unable to have children, the couple adopted Vincent from a Chinese orphanage in 1961.
Throughout most of the 1960s, Chin grew up in Highland Park. In 1971, after the elderly Hing was mugged, the family moved to Oak Park, Michigan. Vincent Chin graduated from Oak Park High School in 1973, studying at Control Data Institute and Lawrence Tech. At the time of his death, Chin was employed as an industrial draftsman at Efficient Engineering, an automotive supplier, and waiting tables at the Golden Star restaurant in Ferndale, Michigan on weekends. He was engaged to be married on June 28, 1982.
During an economic recession in the early 1980s, the auto industry's decline provoked resentment toward imported Japanese cars in Detroit, which was the center of the automotive industry in the United States. "Japan bashing" became popular with politicians, such as U.S. representative from Michigan John Dingell, who blamed "little yellow men" for domestic automakers' misfortune. Nationwide, anti-Asian racism often accompanied campaigns urging consumers to "Buy American".
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