THE BATTLE IN THE COURTS

Throughout the 1980s, ACJ attempted to pursue every legal avenue available to seek justice for Vincent Chin. Numerous legal briefs and court filings were submitted to get a full hearing of the case, which had been denied as a result of the incompetence, inattention and/or ignorance of police, prosecutors and courts, combined with society’s marginalization of Asian Americans. The federal civil rights trial began on June 5, 1984, in the courtroom of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, one of the first African American women to serve on the federal bench. ACJ knew that the courtroom battle would be uphill. Many people had a hard time believing that Asian Americans experienced any kind of racial prejudice, let alone hate violence. Hateful words used against Asian Americans were not viewed as racial slurs by the dominant American culture, from classrooms to newsrooms, courtrooms to Congress. Even liberal-minded people who claimed to never condone racial epithets were unaware of or even unsympathetic to the racial slurs directed at Asian American ethnic groups Dancer Racine Colwell heard Ebens say, “It’s because of you motherf---ers that we’re out of work,” which didn’t contain a single slur or racist word, but it was clearly singling out Asian Americans. According to influential journalists like Don Ball, an older white reporter for the Detroit News who was covering the trial, her eyewitness account was irrelevant, because, he wrote, such statements were “flimsy evidence that Chin’s slaying was racially motivated.” As the “alpha” reporter covering the Vincent Chin proceedings, his bias influenced other coverage that failed to look beyond stereotypes of communities that had been rendered invisible. On June 28, the federal jury in Detroit disagreed with Ball and other naysayers, finding Ebens guilty of violating Vincent Chin’s civil rights; Nitz, who was not alleged to have said anything, was acquitted. In the documentary film, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” the jury foreperson explained on camera that Racine Colwell’s testimony was the decisive factor for the jury in finding Ebens guilty. In Detroit, it was clear that “you motherf---ers” meant the Japanese—or people who looked like them. Ebens was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Judge Taylor. But the case won a retrial on appeal in 1986 because of pretrial publicity and evidentiary errors associated with tapes made of witnesses when ACJ was first investigating the case. It was a cruel irony that the very interviews that convinced Detroit’s Asian American community of the killers’ racial motivation would be used to grant an appeal of the first civil rights trial presided by Judge Taylor in Detroit. The new trial

would be held in Cincinnati, where it was less likely that prospective jurors would know of the case. Located across the Ohio River from Kentucky, Cincinnati was known as a conservative city with Southern sensibilities. Absent was the heightened racial consciousness of Detroit, with its Black majority and civil rights history. If Asians were hard to find in Detroit, they were even more unseen in Cincinnati. The city’s small population of Asian Americans were also easy to target: on July 4, 1986, a gang of “patriotic” whites shot up the homes of Southeast Asian refugees in Cincinnati. When the jury selection process for the new trial began on April 20, 1987, potential jurors were interrogated on their exposure to Asians. “Do you have any contact with Asians? What is the nature of your contact?” they were asked, as though they had been infected by a deadly virus. Their answers were even more revealing. Out of about 180 Cincinnati citizens in the jury pool, only 19 had ever a “casual contact” with an Asian American, whether at work or the local Chinese take-out joint. A white woman who said she had Asian American friends was dismissed as though the friendship tarnished her; also dismissed was the woman whose daughter had Asian friends, and the black man who had served in Korea. No one was asked if contact with white people might bias them. The jury that was eventually seated looked remarkably like Ebens—mostly white, male and blue collar. This time the jury foreperson was a 50-something machinist who was laid off after 30 years. The defense attorneys tried to argue that ACJ and the Asian American community had paid attorney Liza Chan to trump up a civil rights case; that argument was objected to by the prosecutors and overruled by the judge, yet the accusation was still heard. It was a terrible disappointment, though not surprising, when the jury reached its not guilty verdict on May 1, 1987, nearly five years after Vincent Chin was killed. This jury, comprised of people who had virtually no contact with Asian Americans or knowledge of their concerns, was unable to fathom how “it’s because of you motherf---ers” and “get the Chinese” might contain a racial intent. When the criminal prosecutions ended with the acquittals of the Ebens and Nitz, the wrongful death civil suit against for them for the “value” of Vincent’s life could finally proceed. Lily Chin finally had a day in court to say that Vincent Chin’s life had value, that he mattered. The court imposed a judgment of $1.5 million against Ebens, payable in $200 per month installments. Ebens told filmmakers that Lily Chin would never get that money and he moved to Nevada, which has friendly laws for debtors. He lives a comfortable life there and continues to evade his court-ordered judgment.

In these 40 years, Ebens has never shown remorse or assumed responsibility for beating Vincent Chin to death; he once told a reporter that he “was sorry that ‘it’ happened.” Each year, the estate for Vincent Chin and his mother Lily files the necessary documents to keep the judgment against Ebens active, so that Vincent Chin’s killer will never be free of his obligation to pay for the injuries caused by his hate-motivated crime. There are still disbelievers and deniers who claim that anti-Asian hate does not exist. When playwright Cherylene Lee’s drama about the Vincent Chin story, Carry the Tiger to the Mountain, was first performed at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV, near Washington, DC, the festival organizers invited Ebens’ former defense attorney to write a piece for the program book—and he wrote that Vincent might have died from striking his head on the pavement, not from the baseball bat hitting his head. It was as though a play about the Holocaust included notes from a Holocaust denier, or if a program booklet for a play about Black lives included an essay insisting that George Floyd’s murder was a hoax. Those notes found a receptive audience in the Washington Post: their white male theater critic wrote a negative review questioning the play’s validity, because, he said, race was not a factor, according to Ebens’ attorney. The widely believed racist “model minority” myth that Asian people do not experience racism or discrimination is especially harmful to Asian Americans in this current pandemic of anti-Asian hate, just as it was in Vincent Chin’s case. Then, the sentencing local judge and a jury in Cincinnati allowed his killers to go free because they didn’t recognize any racial slurs about Asians. The lack of commonly recognized hate speech about Asians sets a higher bar for Asian Americans who experience discrimination or racism. In reality, hate-motivated acts can be inflicted without a single word being uttered, but for Asian Americans, the default assumption is that there is no racism. Tragically, there are numerous examples of law enforcement, public officials and journalists making knee-jerk denials that race is a factor in crimes against Asian Americans . The March 2021 mass shootings in Atlanta offered a graphic, televised example of police denial, even though the shooter hunted and killed six Asian women and two bystanders at Asian-owned businesses. In spite of racism deniers, Americans of all backgrounds have benefited from the multiple impacts of the civil rights movement for justice for Vincent Chin. When Judge Charles Kaufman sentenced the killers to probation, there was no one present to speak for the victim—no prosecutors or family representatives. Vincent Chin’s story and case became part of the victim’s rights movement that allowed crime victims to make statements at sentencing on the harm they experienced. As that legislative effort in Michigan moved forward, some referred to it as the “Vincent Chin rule.” When Olympic gymnasts testified in a Michigan court about sexual assault they were subjected to by the USA Gymnastics doctor, they were exercising the victim impact statements that Vincent Chin’s case contributed to creating. Hate crimes protections laws were also strengthened because of Vincent Chin. Initially, some white civil rights lawyers asserted that Asian Americans should not be protected by federal civil rights law. They argued that the original intent of those laws was to protect Black people, not Asian Americans and not immigrants. But, through media and education, ACJ and the Asian American community were able to help broaden the scope of civil rights and hate crimes protections, which now also include perceived gender, sexual orientation and disability. The hard work of ACJ and so many other voices around the country has contributed in many ways to American society and the greater good, especially as new generations of activists and advocacy organizations continue to take on the challenges of today.

Conversation Questions

» Why have Asians and Asian Americans been left out of American discourse on race? How do you think this has impacted Asian and Asian American communities? » Earlier in this article, it was noted that Asian Americans were seen as communities that don’t experience racial injustice. Do you think this view has changed in light of current hate crimes against Asians and Asian

Americans? » What are some actionable steps that people and communities can take today to make sure that Asians and

Asian Americans are included in critical discussions about race in America?