Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Today is the 35th anniversary of the beating death of Vincent Chin.  Chin got into a fight in a bar in Detroit after two layoff auto workers called him a racial slur.  The fight was broken up and things should have ended right there.   But the two men waited outside for Chin with baseball bats, chased him down the street and beat him to death.  For this they  made a deal for manslaughter and got probation.  Not a single day of jail for murder.  That is right, murder.  To me the death did not occurred in the heat of battle in the bar but after they had a chance to cool off.  It was a short premeditation, but it was premeditation.  The justice system had failed Vincent Chin.

The death of Vincent Chin did serve to galvanized Asian Americans.  While we are still under represented in government and politics, we are making progress.  We certainly are less afraid to speak out.  I read an article recently about Bill Maher using the word chink on his show.  He never apologized for that even though he apologized for using the N word recently.  I guess there are not enough Asian views for his show.  I would boycott his show except that I don't get premium channels and thus never watched his show anyway.

I think some people think that using derogatory words can't be that bad given that people in certain  ethnic groups would use the words among themselves.  I think the context is important.  For example, when someone at a NY baseball game shout Yankees, nobody is bothered by it.  But if you are an American in some foreign country and someone yells: "Yankees go home", I think  the American may get upset.  A white guy may call himself white trash to make a joke.  But if he is in the inner city and black guys call him white trash, I am sure he will feel uncomfortable at the very least.  So supposedly liberals like Maher should understand this.