The Vincent Chin case was a shocking wake-up call for Asian Americans of all ethnicities who suddenly realized the brutal consequences of the “all Asians look alike” stereotype and anti-Asian slurs. Coming to America, working hard, and keeping your head down per the model minority stereotype was not enough. This could have happened to anyone. However, thirty years later, the Vincent Chin case has become a staple of Asian American Studies courses; the community has grown, developed, and organized; legal changes have been made. Yet still there is much work to be done.click here for whole article: Chicago is the World » Asian Pacific American Community Reflections Thirty Years after Beating Death of Vincent Chin
What does one wear to a gay pride event?
Something fabulous, certainly. But I am such an awkward dresser, I worry and I fret.
Oh! If only I had one of George Takei’s “It’s OK to be Takei” t-shirts. That would have been the perfect connector between the Asian American and LGBT communities. Instead, I opt for urban black, add my most fabulous big red hat, and try as best as I can to channel George Takei’s black t-shirt cool.
Think cool. Gotta be cool.
The very cool Oakland County Commissioner Craig Covey had asked me to speak about the Vincent Chin case at Ferndale Pride‘s Light the Night against Hate, a family-friendly candle-lit walking tour around downtown Ferndale for folks from all backgrounds to “learn more about historical and contemporary issues surrounding hate in our schools and communities, including hateful speech in social media and online bullying…[and] to visibly unite against hate.”
It was a beautiful and warm Friday night, lots of folks downtown, laughter and music spilling out of all the restaurants and bars.click link for whole article: Crossing Boundaries and Standing Up for Justice Together. NoH8. Remembering Vincent Chin - NAM EthnoBlog
Sharing our stories and knowing our history is a necessary, political act. The effort to keep the lessons of Chin’s death and the fight for justice from being swallowed up by the unstoppable passage of time is not about any romantic nostalgia—understanding the past is key to making sense of the ongoing fight for justice today, activists say.
“The facts of the story are never going to change. It’s never going to have a happy ending, but it can move people to get indignant. It can move people to action,” said Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, a Michigan-based writer and activist. It’s often said that in the the aftermath of Chin’s murder, the Asian-American community was born. Asian Americans, who tended to identify by ethnicity first, came to unite around a new political identity. Chin became a symbol in the Asian-American civil rights movement, a reminder that the struggle for justice is never quite over. Wang organized the Vincent Chin Postcard Project to collect exactly these sorts of stories. Among Wang’s favorite responses was one which asked: “How long will it be before we forget Trayvon Martin like we forgot Vincent Chin?”
Images and language matters. Dehumanizing language and images make it easier to attack those who are treated as less than fully human. Whatever the community, whoever the target, demagoguery comes with a real human cost. “People who do this are putting our lives at risk,” said Wang. She cited this year’sfearmongering political ads which played on American fears about the economic ascendance of Asian countries. In transparently coded images and words, politicians exploit those fears, but not without with great risk. “People see those ads and even if they don’t fully understand the message of the ad they take away this fear of China, and that makes it dangerous for those of us real Asians who are walking around on the street.”
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