The case of Vincent Chin, where two white men publicly brutally beat a Chinese American man to death in 1982 and only received 3 years probation each, is an open sore in Asian American history. While Asian American activists took the case to court, filing the first federal case of a hate crime against an Asian American, the killers were still acquitted of all charges (including committing a hate crime) by an all white jury in Cincinnati.
Most recently, two young white men beat to death Luis Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant, while taunting him with racial slurs. The killers were also acquitted by an all white jury of all charges including third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation. Although the Vincent Chin case has passed but is continually remembered by the Asian American community, Luis Ramirez's case is still active. This is where crossracial coalition and alliance work is crucial.
So far, this is the only petition/action I've found, but let's all please keep our eyes peeled for more actions to come. Petition
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No Justice for Vincent Then, No Justice for Luis Now
Editor’s Note: Last week, two of the young white men who allegedly killed Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Penn. were acquitted by an all white jury. The case mirrors the first federal hate crime prosecution involving an Asian American. Carmina Ocampo is a Skadden fellow and staff attorney at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) of Los Angeles. Immigration Matters regularly features the views of immigration advocates and experts.
Last July, Luis Ramirez, a Latino immigrant who worked in a factory, was brutally killed by a gang of drunken white teenagers motivated by their dislike of the growing Latino population in their small coalmining town of Shenandoah, Penn. Two of the young white men who killed Luis were recently acquitted by an all white jury of all serious charges including third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation.
The facts of this case sounded all too familiar to those of us lawyers who work on civil rights cases. They mirror the facts at the heart of the 1982 Vincent Chin hate crime case.
Luis Ramirez was taunted with racial slurs and beaten to death during an altercation with a group of drunken white teenagers....Luis’s murder occurred during a time of increasing anti-immigrant sentiment directed primarily towards Latino immigrants, exacerbated by the economic crisis. Vincent Chin’s murder took place during a climate of intense anti-Asian sentiment directed at the Japanese who were blamed for taking jobs away from American workers. Helen Zia, a well-known Asian American civil rights activist described the early 1980s as a dangerous time to look Asian. The same may be said for Latinos today.
In both Luis’s and Vincent’s cases, the killers argued that their actions should be excused because they were drunk, the victims were the aggressors, and they were merely exercising self-defense during a drunken brawl.
Right, they're arming because they cheat and they want to take over the world. Disgusting.
I feel so bad for the adopted girl.
You thought AAA's Fear Factor event at Night Market was bad? Take a look at this: "The Six Most Terrifying Foods in the World" (Warning: Some of these foods are legitimately disgusting!)
Some choice quotations from the article and why they're fucked up... all the reasons related to xenophobia, cultural demonization, and basic hate. Every food is examined with the "Danger of this turning up in America". That's right, protect your homeland - from food. But read the below quotations.
About an Iraqi goat head dish: "Its hollow eye sockets stare back at you with a look of grim damnation. 'Burp while ye may," the sockets say, "for the same fate will happen to you--and all too soon.' ... We wonder why the Iraqis keep blowing themselves up? Wouldn't you, if every evening meal was a festival of death?"
About a Filipino and Cambodian egg delicacy: "They are enjoyed in Cambodia, Philippines and the fifth and seventh levels of hell. They are typically sold by street vendors at night, out of buckets of warm sand. You can spot the vendors because of their glowing red eyes, and the faint, otherworldly sound of children screaming."
The lesson here? There's more to the stigmatization of food and culture than making people eat disgusting shit on Low Plaza, and the equally disgusting comments you see above illustrate this perfectly. I hope that seeing us have fun with something like Fear Factor encouraged you to think about some of these issues!
Just wanted to congratulate CU Democrats for their performance in the debate last night on immigration against the College Republicans. With the coming of the ostentatiously racist Islamo-Fascism week, we're glad this fight is starting already.
If you want a live-blog of the debate, here's the link to perhaps the only other campus blog to use a lame Blogger template. (Or do you?)
Alas, we couldn't be there (teahouse with Conchita's Collective!), or we would've submitted our own questions. As Howard University Professor Frank Wu writes in Yellow, all debates regarding immigration are ultimately debates about race. (And his word is absolute truth. Duh.)
Our favorite part:
9:35 Greer just took the Republicans to task for pretending not to see xenophobia in immigration issues while at the same time inviting speakers like Jim Gilchrist to campus.Good job!
[UPDATE 11:15pm] The New York Times has followed up its previous article with this one. There's a nice little quote hidden in there from Dara O’Rourke, associate professor of labor and environmental policy at UC Berkeley.
"Mattel used China as a scapegoat for its own problems and that the toymaker is now paying the price for that."That quote says a lot about the Chinese exports scare, but forgets to note the racial issues involved. Namely, if Mattel were producing at the same price in any other country, would they have tried to use that country as a scapegoat just as they had with China? A related question would be, why did the country fall for it so easily?
Finding a scapegoat to avoid blame and dodge shareholder fallout is one issue, but there's clearly more to it. Maybe given national sentiments at the time toward Chinese exports for other regulatory violations (toothpaste, pet food) Mattel just thought they could get away with it? Or maybe they just shared the same sentiment?
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Earlier this morning, Mattel issued an apology to China (yes, to the entirety of China - thats a lot of apologies) for its excessive recall of toys from China.
"Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys''Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, also acknowledged that the ''vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers.'' A few other notable quotes from the New York Times...
Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys recalled, he said, adding that: ''We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers."Mattel's apology reflects how the Chinese product scare has been blown out of proportion. Amid the series of recent China recalls, faults endemic to American design became attributed to Chinese manufacturing. Anyone who has paid attention to recent commentary on Chinese exports know that this is not the only consequence of "Yellow Paint Peril". The fact that Mattel issued the apology to China, as opposed to the specific manufacturers or even just Chinese manufacturers, reveals how this issue has not only affected the reputations of the manufacturers involved or even just Chinese industry, but rather China as a whole. I would extend that range to include Chinese outside of the P.R.C. as well.
... new research from two business professors shows that recalls due to problems with the U.S. maker's design accounted for the vast majority -- about 76 percent -- of the 550 U.S.toy recalls since 1988...
''if shifting manufacturing to China resulted in poorer quality goods, then the number of toys recalled due to manufacturing should be greater than the number recalled due to design,'' the report said. But that is not the case.
There are certainly many regulatory problems in China and having worked in China I have seen some of these issues first-hand. Nonetheless, its important to consider why the Chinese product scare exploded the way it did. Why was it so easy for Mattel to overlook the design faults in their toys as they recalled millions of toys on the basis of lead paint added by Chinese manufacturers against Mattel standards? Discuss.
In a new article about the Chinese toy boycott, the NYT so tactfully conjures up this image:
Doesn't a white Lego figurine carting off an Asian-featured Lego figurine strike you as ... what's the word... interesting, to say the least? (Xenophobic? No, it couldn't be!)
New York Times: Why Lead in Toy Paint? It’s Cheaper
Or maybe Chinese people intrinsically have a lower set of moral values? Raging red-capitalist opportunism? The dog is getting to their brains? (Sarcasm blunt enough?)
No, it's never been acceptable to allow lead contaminants in sight of anything touched by children; the stake of the issue is out of question. But if you don't feel a tinge of American xenophobia in this latest journalistic fad, take another look. Welcome to the new "yellow peril".
