On June 19, 1982, twenty years ago, Vincent Chin, Chinese-American was beaten to death in Detroit by two White auto workers who believed he was Japanese. Chin's death sparkled nation--wide protests and a political movement among Asian-Americans on campuses in the 1980s. Twenty years later, a group of students gathered together in Detroit in memory of Vincent Chin, a victim of hate crime. As reported by Lynette Clementson (The New York Times, June 18), "persistent stereotypes, like the 'perpetual foreigner' with questionable allegiances or the 'model minority' taking over academic and professional institutions, foster a social and political climate as potentially dangerous, activists say, as the one that led to Vincent Chin's death." Clementson wrote that though political influence of Asian Americas increased in last two decades, "so have acts of prejudice and intimidation. Anti-Asian incidents - from vandalism to murder - ranged from 400 to 500 a year in the mid-1990's, according to National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, a Washington-based group."
Ms. Ijun Lai, co-chairwoman of the University of Michigan's United Asian American Organizations, is one of the participants in commemoration of Chin's death. She and other members of American Citizens for Justice said part of the legacy ov Chin's death was a need to battle stereotypes - positive and negative - about Asian Americans.