Event: Film Screening and Discussion: Vincent Who?

Time: 6:00-8:00pm, Friday, 11/21

Organization: A/P/A institute and The Center for The Multicultural Education &Programs

The film starts by randomly asking students on the campus of UCLA if they heard of Vincent Chin. Almost all of them have no idea about who this person is. The film explores what happened to Vincent Chin in 1982, and the impact of this incident to Asian American community. Vincent Chin Incident happened in Detroit in 1982. After attending his bachelor party with his friends at a bar, he was attacked by an Autoworkers Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz because they thought that Vincent was a Japanese. Ronald and Michael beat Vincent with a baseball bat, and brutally killed him. While beating Vincent, Michael and Ronald kept calling Vincent a “Jap.” The last words that Vincent said to his friend before his death were “It is not fair.” However, Wayne County Judge Charles Kaufman just sentenced Ebens and Nitz three years probation, and a $3,000 fine. This unjust sentence to Vincent’s death caused Asian Americans to realize the systematic discrimination that the society had toward them. All of them got the message from this case that an Asian American’s life is worthless to this country. The protests had been held simultaneously by Asian Americans in many cities in the country. This incident became a turning point that all Asian American for the first time stood together to fight for the justice and equality in the history of Asian American. However, just after twenty five years of Vincent’s death, people forget who Vincent was and what happened to him. Most people never learn about this, or even they learn in their textbooks it is only about three sentences. As the producer Curtis Chin introduced, his main purpose of making this documentary film is to “bring Vincent’s name back”, “to learn the past and move forward.” The second of his goal is that “we have some national leaders that we can turn to when something bad happen to our community.”

I think this film deeply affected me, I am very happy that I was able to attend this event. It makes me realize how fast people, even in many Asian American communities, are forgetting their own history. As we all know that people are making changes through learning their own history, but now we are losing the important historical events they can all learn from. I think this is the most crucial piece that I learn from this film. It not only reminds Asian Americans to stand together as a whole community to against the discrimination toward them, but also provide a foundation that all Americans can build upon. Richard Chavolla, a director from The Center for Multicultural Education and Programs, drew the parallel at the opening speech between Vincent case and Marcello Lucero’s death happened last month. Marcello Lucero, an Ecuadorian, was brutally stabbed to death by a group of white teenagers in Long Islands because he was thought to be a “Mexican.” Similarly, both Vincent and Marcello were killed during an economic downturn. Back in early 1980s, many automobile workers lost their job because Japanese automobile companies took their orders. If Vincent were not an Asian, if Macello did not look like “Mexican,” they would not be killed. But this is not the whole point. Nobody in our society has the right to take other people’s lives because of the country where they originally come from or their skin color. I think as a future teacher we could definitely use this film in teaching about the multicultural education. It is very important that we do not forget our history, but most importantly we are able to make connections between the history with current events. Let our students learn what they could do to fight for the current social injustice.