Vincent Who?
Vincent Who? is a documentary film that was released in 2009. It details the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin that occurred in Detroit, Michigan.
Chin was a 27-year-old Chinese-American who was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two Detroit autoworkers, who had mistakenly thought that he was Japanese and, in their minds, was responsible for the loss of jobs in the U.S. auto industry.[1]
As part of making the film, producer Curtis Chin (who is not related to Vincent Chin[2]) asked approximately 80 young Asian Americans if they had ever heard of Vincent Chin — they hadn't.[1]
The film begins[2] by explaining that Chin's killers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, were originally charged with second-degree murder but were allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter. Judge Charles Kaufman, who sentenced them to three years' probation and a $3,000 fine, explained his leniency by saying, "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail."[1]
The National Association for Multicultural Education gave Vincent Who? its 2009 Multicultural Media Award.[3]
References
- 1 2 3 Jeff Gammage, The murder that galvanized Asian American activism, The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 5, 2010.
- 1 2 David Moore, "Vincent Who?" Documentary Tour Comes to GVSU, WGVU, February 22, 2010.
- ↑ The Multicultural Media Award, National Association for Multicultural Education.
External links
- Interview with Curtis Chin, Producer and Co-Director, Asian Avenue Magazine
- Lynda Lin, Resurrecting Vincent Chin, Pacific Citizen, June 20, 2008.
- Vincent Who? at the Internet Movie Database