Black and Asian solidarity urged by Detroit group on anniversary of Vincent Chin's death

Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press

On the 39th anniversary of Vincent Chin's death, Black and Asian American advocates called for solidarity across racial lines at a forum Wednesday evening hosted by a Detroit foundation. The event was one of several over the past week remembering Vincent Chin, who died on June 23, 1982, in Detroit after being assaulted by white men who made anti-Asian remarks.

The forum was the first public event of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation of Detroit, which is named after the late interracial Detroit couple who fought for civil rights and social justice.

The forum comes at a time of concern about a spike in anti-Asian violence over the past year, some of it tied to rhetoric about the origins of COVID-19 and China. There is also tension over some incidents of violence between Asian Americans and African Americans that went viral on social media. 

Picture of Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two white men wielding a baseball bat.

"The 40-year partnership of James and Grace Lee Boggs as a Black and Asian American couple in marriage and movement activism is often viewed as inspiring but exceptional," said the foundation's president and forum's moderator, Professor Scott Kurashige, chair of the Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies at Texas Christian University. "They understood, however, that we need to change the narrative of who we are and how we relate to each other, both in our local communities and as a nation. How can our diverse struggles bind us together to fight injustice and advance our common humanity?"

The James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation of Detroit held a forum on June 23, 2021, on the 39th anniversary of Vincent Chin's death titled "From #StopAsianHate to Cross-Racial Solidarity: Tributes & Lessons." With U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, actor Danny Glover, Maya Soetoro-Ng, advisor to the Obama Foundation and a sister to former President Barack Obama, and Prof. Scott Kurashige of Texas Christian University, a former Detroit resident who is president of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation.

Born to immigrants from China, the late Grace Lee Boggs became an outspoken activist in Detroit who gained national attention for her work. Now, her supporters are hoping to continue her legacy by expanding the work of the foundation and a center in Detroit.

Other speakers at the forum included actor Danny Glover, who grew up among Asian Americans and African Americans in northern California; Maya Soetoro-Ng, an advisor to the Obama Foundation who is a sister of former President Barack Obama; and U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit.

Tlaib spoke of her diverse upbringing and career, interacting with Black, Latino, Arab American and other communities in the districts she has represented in the state House and now Congress. Tlaib recalled how mothers who are Black were the ones who encouraged her own mother, an Arab immigrant with an accent who was shy about raising her voice, to speak up during parent-teacher conferences in school.

"I still remember as a child, it was always the Black mothers that would tell Fatima, my mom: raise your voice," Tlaib recalled. "She would be so incredibly scared to speak up. But they would be like: speak up, we need to hear you."

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"I'm Palestinian, but growing up in the most beautiful, Blackest city in the country has made me a more committed ... justice seeker," Tlaib said. "Growing up in southwest Detroit, where there's 20 different ethnicities from all different backgrounds ... my dad grew up in Nicaragua half of his life, all these beautiful lived experiences."

Chin was assaulted in June 1982 outside a club in Highland Park by unemployed autoworkers who yelled at him: "It's because of you little (expletives) that we're out of work." 

"Vincent Chin was killed in my district," Tlaib said, noting that people who hate one group often hate other groups as well.  "There is no hierarchy of who's hated the most in our country ... it's so interconnected." 

Earlier this month, tensions emerged online after a man, who is of Vietnamese descent, shot at a boy, who is Black, outside his home in Ypsilanti. The incident prompted calls for a boycott of a Vietnamese restaurant based on erroneous online allegations that he was working there or was the owner.

Also, other incidents nationally where suspects who are Black attacked Asian Americans went viral on social media. But a report by NBC News last week debunked the idea that Blacks are the ones behind the wave of anti-Asian violence.

"While news reports and social media have perpetuated the idea that anti-Asian violence is committed mostly by people of color, a new analysis shows the majority of attackers are white," according to NBC News report. 

At the forum Wednesday night, Glover, who is Black, talked about growing up the son of NAACP activists among Asian Americans, African Americans and whites in California. He recalled his Asian American classmates on the football team and how he later fought together with different races in the late 1960s at San Francisco State University to have ethnic studies programs. 

Marchers carried signs calling for harsher penalties for the killers of Vincent Chin.

Glover was part of a group during college called the Third World Liberation Front.

"When we were on strike in the fight at school for ethnic studies, it was not just limited to simply a Black studies program, not simply a Hispanic studies program, not simply an Asian studies program, but a school of ethnic studies" for all minority groups, Glover said.

Soetoro-Ng recalled growing up in Indonesia the daughter of a white mother, who was also Obama's mother, and an Indonesian father. She said that people and communities sometimes get unfairly scapegoated, such as ethnic Chinese communities in Indonesia or Asian Americans in the U.S.

"I became really aware of the human capacity to embrace and love broadly, intensely and imaginatively, but also the capacity to destroy, divide, to get trapped in narrow spaces," Soetoro-Ng said. 

Contact Niraj Warikoo at nwarikoo@freepress.com or Twitter @nwarikoo.

To watch a replay of the forum held Wednesday night, go to: https://youtu.be/pu_N1hfn0j0