goawaywithjae:

With just one article, the Detroit News has taken a step towards revising what happened to Vincent Chin on June 23, 1982.

Most Asian-Americans of a certain age will remember that Chin and his friends were celebrating his upcoming nuptials at a Detroit-area strip club. That evening, he exchanged words with Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, two white men who blamed the recession on the Japanese. A fight broke out.

“It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work!” Ebens said. He didn’t know — or care — that Chin was of Chinese ethnicity, not Japanese.

Both parties were thrown out of the club. And that should’ve been the end of that.

But Ebens and Nitz took it one step further, offering a man $20 to help them hunt Chin down. Once they found him at a McDonald’s parking lot, they beat him with a baseball bat so severely that they cracked his head open.

Chin’s final words were, “It’s not fair.”

On what should’ve been his wedding day, friends and family instead attended Chin’s funeral.

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