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Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987)
Directors: Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peña
Length: 82 minutes
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Photo by Richard Sheinwald (AP)
Synopsis
Who Killed Vincent Chin? is a documentary film about the murder of Chinese American Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death by two white men, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, in June 1982 in Detroit, Michigan. Chin was a 27-year-old engineer and was celebrating his bachelor’s party the night he was fatally attacked. The anti-Japanese sentiment at the time was strong in Detroit due to the rise of Japan’s automotive industry and the decline of Detroit’s auto business. Ebens and Nitz were automobile workers. They mistook Chin for Japanese, blamed him for the city’s growing unemployment, and attacked him with a baseball bat after a brawl. Ebens and Nitz pled guilty to manslaughter in 1983 despite an original charge of second-degree murder. They denied it was a racially charged hate crime and never served time in prison. The documentary interweaves multiple narratives to recount the story through interviews with those present at the crime or its legal aftermath, including Chin’s mother Lily Chin, eyewitnesses, one juror, Chin’s friends, and Ebens and his wife. It also documents the community activism that pushed for the retrial of the case as a civil rights Supreme Court case. The documentary contains graphic language describing violence. Viewer discretion is advised.
Significance
People forget. Who Killed Vincent Chin? is an important reminder of a past that is still relevant in today’s America. It probes the failure and implications of the judicial system and documents one of the early moments that united diverse Asian communities to fight for civil rights in the 1980s. Helen Zia, award-winning journalist-activist who helped bring together Asian Americans to seek justice for Chin in the 1980s, dissects the case in her book Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, in which she argues that Chin’s death was one of the junctures that motivated Asian Americans to transform from a few disconnected ethnic groups into a politically and socially impactful racial group. In 2020, with global protests seeking justice for George Floyd and renewed anti-Asian sentiment amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to remember the murder of Vincent Chin and understand its continued relevance.
The filmmakers
Renee Tajima-Peña (1958-) was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her grandparents moved from Japan during the Asian Exclusion Era in the early 1900s. Tajima-Peña is a Harvard University alum and majored in East Asian Studies and sociology. She is heavily involved with the Asian American movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Tajima-Peña directed many influential and award-winning films, including Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987) and No Más Bebés (2015). Her work focuses on issues of immigration, race, gender, and social justice and has been screened internationally and at festivals such as Cannes Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival. Tajima-Peña most recently produced a five-part PBS series Asian Americans (2020). She is currently a Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA.
Christine Choy (1952-) was born in Shanghai, China to a Chinese mother and a Korean father, and then moved to South Korea during the Cultural Revolution in China. Choy was trained in architecture, but later studied directing at the American Film Institute to become a filmmaker. Her work is concerned with discrimination and migration issues. In addition to the Academy Award nominated co-directed Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987), Choy also directed From Spikes to Spindles (1976) which focuses on Chinese migrant workers, and co-directed Sa-I-gu (1993) which is about 1992 LA riots and their impact on Korean Americans. Choy is currently a Professor of Film and Television at NYU’s Tisch School of Arts and has taught at Yale, Cornell, and SUNY Buffalo.
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Further reading and listening
Academic Books and Chapters
- Zia, Helen. Asian American dreams: The emergence of an American people. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. (Chapter three “Detroit Blues” is particularly relevant. Most of the book is free to preview via Google Books in the hyperlink.)
- Ma, Sheng-mei. The deathly embrace: Orientalism and Asian American identity. U of Minnesota Press, 2000. (Chapter four “Vincent Chin and Baseball: Law, Racial Violence, and Masculinity” is particularly relevant. Most of the book is free to preview via Google Books in the hyperlink.)
Newspaper Articles and Popular Books
- Wu, Frank H. “Why Vincent Chin Matters.” The New York Times, 23 June 2012.
- Fromer, Jacob. “Amid George Floyd protests and Covid-19 fears, Asian-Americans recall the death of Vincent Chin.” South China Morning Post, 19 June 2020. (Learn about why Chin’s death is still relevant today. Helen Zia calls the outcry following Chin’s death “strikingly, starkly similar” to the George Floyd protests today. US Representative Judy Chu remarks that “Vincent Chin’s death was a turning point for the Asian-American community.”)
- Wang, Claire. “Trump’s ‘Kung Flu’ Slur, Pervasive Scapegoating Recall a Brutal Decades-Old Hate Crime.” NBC News, 23 June 2020. (Learn about the relevance of Chin’s case in relation to the context and the racial politics of the COVID-19 pandemic.)
- Yoo, Paula. From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement (Forthcoming 2021)
Documentaries and Videos
- Another documentary about Vincent Chin, which focuses more on the aftermath of Chin’s murder: Vincent Who? (2009) (Writer: Curtis Chin; Director: Tony Lam.)
Talks and Podcasts
- Emil Guillermo (2017), “Lessons from Vincent Chin murder 35 years after; Podcast interview with Helen Zia; and thoughts on my interview with Chin’s killer, Ronald Ebens.”
- Frank H. Wu (2011). “After Vincent Chin: A New Civil Rights Movement.”