College of Ethnic Studies group worked together to fight against oppression by developing news media outlets for Asian Americans, Asian American Studies programs in colleges, and by gaining federal funding for social services programs. Asian Americans were further united when anti-Asian violence arose. In 1982, Chinese American Vincent Chin was brutally murdered by two white men, who had mistaken his identity as Japanese. The two white men had recently lost their jobs in the auto industry in Detroit and were angered by the economic boom of the Japanese auto industry. Instead of a prison sentence, the two men were sentenced to three years of probation and fined $3000 (Espiritu, 1992, p. 141). This enraged and united the Asian American community. For five years, the Asian American community appealed for federal Civil Rights charges against the two white men. However, after many trials and appeals, the two men were acquitted. Again, in 1989, Chinese American Jim (Ming Hai) Loo was mistaken as Vietnamese and attacked and killed by two white men. The two white men bred animosity towards the Vietnamese because their brother fought in the Vietnam War. The Chin and Loo cases sparked an alliance among the Asian American community because anti-Asian agitators could not distinguish the national origins between Asians (Espiritu, 1992, p. 158). A Chinese or Japanese American could easily be mistaken for a Vietnamese or Korean American, or vice versa, and be physically attacked by racists. As a result, the Asian American community had to come together to fight for the justice of all Asian Americans. The unity among the panethnic Asian American group has created many positive changes for all Asian Americans. However, grouping different cultural groups together has undoubtedly become problematic. Problems within the group have stirred because of the social class differences. “The Asian American category includes Japanese Americans, who have higher median family incomes than whites and the Hmong of Southeast Asia, who are one of the poorest U.S. population groups� (Marable, 2000). Recently, there has been a focus to distribute federal funding to Southeast Asian groups. As a result, other Asian groups (like Chinese and Japanese) have used this knowledge to their advantage by opening their programs to Southeast
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