SCAPEGOATS AGAIN
Moore, Michael
'Hate crimes' against Asian-Americans are on the rise Scapegoats Again BY MICHAEL MOORE It is the night of June 19, 1982, and at the Fancy Pants Lounge in Detroit, three friends are helping...
...When I. was back in Michigan not long ago, I drove past a bowling-alley marquee that read, If you drive a Jap car, go apply for Japanese welfare...
...While we're trying to deal with things in the front yard, they're in the back yard taking over the country...
...Wakabayashi, whose father was interned during World War II, has led the fight for reparations to the victims of that travesty...
...Several years ago, CBS Evening News referred to Japanese imports as "the second Japanese invasion of the United States," illustrating the report with pictures of the bombing of Pearl Harbor...
...Such resentment drove Ronald Ebens, too, that night in Detroit, though he insists his confrontation withVincent Chin had nothing to do with anti-Asian racism...
...For violating Vincent Chin's civil rights, Ebens and Nitz were fined $3,780 each and placed on three years' probation...
...Hate crimes' against Asian-Americans are on the rise Scapegoats Again BY MICHAEL MOORE It is the night of June 19, 1982, and at the Fancy Pants Lounge in Detroit, three friends are helping Vincent Chin celebrate his upcoming marriage to Vicki Wong...
...I always worry that something will happen to my kid at school on that day...
...Shame on us for just letting them beat us...
...All I wanted to do was inflict a little injury----" When Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman let Ebens and Nitz off with a $3,780 fine, Asian-Americans throughout the country were outraged...
...But now he has agreed to an interview because, he believes, his side of the story has not been told...
...I'm easy, you know...
...At least I'm alive...
...Nitz grabs him from behind, and Ebens smashes the bat into Chin's legs...
...The American people, as a whole, should wise up and just realize that we got to do better, period...
...As Chin falls to the pavement, Ebens swings the bat again and scores a direct hit on Chin's chest, breaking several ribs...
...Forget Pearl Harbor—Remember Detroit, reads the bumper sticker on a Ford Mustang heading down Main Street in Milpitas, California, where the Ford Motor plant closed recently...
...If he were alive, Chin might disagree...
...That doesn't mean I want to live with them, OK...
...All I'm saying is that if he hadn't started it, he'd still be alive...
...Another cautioned me about opening a checking account at a bank staffed "mostly by Chinese" who "do not speak English very well...
...As he shows me to the door, he grasps my right hand firmly and, with his other arm, gives me a big, friendly squeeze...
...Every day I have to let up and put my life back together again...
...That was five years ago, and Ebens has refused ever since to talk to reporters...
...I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it'si right that he died...
...He took off running and I hollered at him, 'You son of a bitch.' He ran out into the street and Mike [Nitz, Ebens's stepson] ran right into him and grabbed him...
...Chin recognizes Ebens and starts to run...
...It's the day you run into bullshit," says Wakabayashi, the national director of the Japanese American Citizens League...
...From the Atari factory in Santa Clara, California, to the GM plant in Norwood, Ohio, management has discovered it is more profitable to produce in Singapore or Korea or Taiwan...
...I think I probably hit Chin in the leg or something, and the only thing that's ever made any sense in my mind is that, as he started to go down, I must have caught him in the head [with the bat...
...He was a general foreman and, before that, a plant superintendent...
...The boom-box bashing is not an anti-Asian or even an anti-Japanese gesture, Bentley tells me...
...Ebens and Nitz offer a passerby $20 to help them find "the little Chinaman...
...Bentley explains...
...People are wrong about me, period," he says...
...When Ebens sees Chin give a generous tip to a white dancer, he becomes upset...
...Hard times require a scapegoat, and it's easy to blame the Japanese (who serve as all-purpose Asians also representing Koreans, Taiwanese, Filipinos, and Malaysians) for plant shutdowns, lower wages, unemployment, and the trade imbalance...
...It's a hot, sticky summer day in Washington, D.C...
...California—particularly the San Francisco Bay Area—has historically witnessed the most pronounced anti-Asian racism, from the Laundry Pole Ordinance of 1870...
...All in all, he looks like a man who might help out at the church fish fry and coach Little League...
...That report, says Yee, "did much to perpetuate the image of the Asian hordes once again attacking the United States...
...Such comments, says Alan Yee, co-chair of Asian American Citizens for Justice, "go a long way toward contributing to the general animosity that Asians in this country are experiencing...
...Television news shows regularly permit interview subjects to make derogatory remarks about Asians that would be barred if directed at other racial groups...
...From the trunk of his car, Nitz produces a Louisville Slugger baseball bat...
...I resent the fact that we are becoming a colony of Japan...
...we blame [General Motors Chairman] Roger Smith...
...A related high-tech system made by Kongsberg, a Norwegian firm, has also been sold to the Soviet Union, but no Norwegian product—no can of sardines, for example—is being smashed on the west lawn of the Capitol...
...Well," he responds in the most relaxed tone I've heard all afternoon, "here you got all these people walking around unemployed and these people [the immigrants] are coming in by the droves...
...Though the death of Vincent Chin was an extreme case, incidents of discrimination, harassment, and physical violence directed at Americans of Asian ancestry have intensified and multiplied in recent years...
...The only ones I had ever met are the ones in the Chinese restaurants, and they were always nice and I was nice to them...
...Being an American of Japanese ancestry carries a lot of negative baggage with it...
...The need for a racial scapegoat has never been greater...
...Little fuckers, big fuckers, we're all the same," Ebens says...
...Chin hauls off and slugs Ebens...
...The conciliatory words come too late...
...Once again white Americans are wielding sledgehammers and baseball bats against things Japanese—this time on the Capitol lawn...
...Last year, after an elderly man was beaten for eating a stray dog, Ron Wakabayashi testified before a State Assembly committee in Sacramento against enactment of laws prohibiting the consumption of dog and cat meat...
...The print media are no better...
...Ebens believes the Asian-American organizations put him through "four years of hell with a bunch of damn lies...
...All that is part of the climate in which Vincent Chin died...
...Al Neuharth, chairman of USA Today, wrote from Hawaii last year: "1941: Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor...
...Now bleeding and crumpled in the middle of Woodward Avenue, Chin looks up and sees Ebens bringing his bat down for a third strike, this time against his skull...
...Iwonder how Ebens feels about the Japanese imports and about Asian immigrants...
...Bumper stickers proclaim, I'd rather eat worms than drive a Jap bike...
...He knows someone is bound to ride the trollies screaming about the "yellow peril," or a reporter will call and ask for a "kamikaze quote," or Franklin D. Roosevelt's voice will be heard on the newscasts, urging Congress to declare war on Japan...
...Norway doesn't sell consumer goods here...
...Justice Department reported a 62 per cent rise in "hate crimes" against Asian-Americans in 1986...
...He was management...
...According to Wakabayashi, Asian-Americans "feel like we're a guest in someone else's house, that we can never really relax and put our feet up on the table...
...Ebens has not worked since...
...Ebens was sentenced to twenty-five years' imprisonment, but an appeals court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial, which ended in acquittal...
...I would never have imagined," Wakabayashi says, "that one day I would find myself having to state in public that I don't eat cats and dogs...
...It has historic roots, and it receives current encouragement from corporate executives, politicians, and media commentators...
...After cruising the neighborhood for a few minutes, they spot Chin sitting outside the McDonald's restaurant on Woodward Avenue, Detroit's main street...
...I Still Don't Know What Their Plight Is' In the modest brick ranch home in East Detroit, Ronald Ebens is sitting with the drapes drawn, watching a Saturday-afternoon Western on TV...
...A fight ensues, and the bar owner throws both men out...
...Even a casual reader of the Local 598 newspaper quickly learns that there is no such thing these days as an "American car...
...The Japanese are coming in," Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca told a group of House Democrats in 1985...
...He claims witnesses were coached into making such allegations...
...The laws, he felt, were aimed primarily at stereotypes of the Asian population...
...Get Ready for the Gook Aesthetic...
...When I moved to San Francisco in the spring of 1986, my new co-workers gave me various "Asian warnings...
...Hey," he says, "I didn't even know there was one, that's how dumb I am...
...I can't honestly say I harbor any feelings against any ethnic group, OK...
...Ebens, a supervisor at Chrysler Motors, and Nitz, a former auto worker, were eventually tried and convicted...
...They blew it all out of proportion," Ebens says...
...Sure it's our own damn fault...
...The audience applauds...
...1987: Money is accomplishing for the Japanese much of what their military couldn't...
...I don't hold the Asian mass responsible for the actions of these few people," he adds...
...The legislators simply want to send a message to Toshiba, which has sold "highly sensitive technology to the KGB...
...As the economic climate deteriorates in a growing number of communities, he adds, there is fear that the guest will be made less and less welcome...
...I'm a pushover...
...Duplicity Is Chinese...
...I am not the way I have been made out to be...
...Racist graffiti have begun appearing on the walls of Chinese businesses in San Francisco: Chinatown Slithers Upscale...
...The Government, he says, has "gone way overboard with this...
...The U.S...
...As for Japanese imports, "if it don't bother you, then you're awfully stupid...
...He refused...
...Ebens says he has been made to suffer because the Asian-American community needed a cause to rally around...
...That kind of rhetoric, equating the slaughter of thousands of Americans with the export of thousands of Toyotas, whips up the anti-Asian fervor of those who are already hurting...
...Every year on December 7, San Franciscan Ron Wakabayashi brings a brown-bag lunch to work so that he won't have to leave the office...
...I don't even rknow them...
...And the portion of foreign-made parts is even higher in Ford and Chrysler cars...
...But they used the press, they used the Federal Government, they used everybody in this thing," he continues...
...I still don't know what their plight is...
...We know," a UAW official told me, 'I would never have imagined that one day I would find myself having to state in public that I don't eat cats and dogs.' "that the real work which has to be done is to organize the foreign workers who are working in slave-like conditions...
...To put somebody through what I've been through, just for a cause, that's wrong," he says, shaking his head and clenching his fist...
...If he [Chin] hadn't started it, he'd still be alive," Ebens begins...
...Their goal: Conquer Hawaii and the U.S.A...
...See "I Still Don't Know What Their Plight Is," Page 28...
...Vincent and I were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it's too bad, you know, especially for him...
...They [Chin and his friends] were looking for trouble, and they got it...
...Ebens leans back in his recliner, cranks the handle that produces the retractable foot stool, and asks for a little understanding...
...The Asians, he concludes, "all stick together...
...Neither spent a single day behind bars...
...Last year, GM opened eleven factories in Mexico alone...
...Michigan...
...The members of the wrecking party smile for the photographers who have arrived to record this historic moment...
...But Ronald Ebens is the man who clubbed Vincent Chin to death with a baseball bat...
...Two dozen McDonald's patrons, including two Detroit police officers, watched this scene in disbelief...
...Vincent Chin does not move...
...But the same official asked me not to use his name because "Well, the higher-ups are still on their 'Buy American' kick...
...Why don't white people stick together...
...Now," he asks, "I don't look like some killer, do I?" —M.M...
...He was a superintendent for Chrysler with seventeen years' seniority when he was fired following his conviction—"because the company didn't want to take any flak," he says...
...That's the answer...
...The media have done their share in blaming Asians for America's ills...
...I think they're a bunch of jerks," he says...
...Hey, you little motherfucker," Ebens shouts at Chin...
...Imagine what this has been like for me," Ebens says...
...Everyone has "some racist feelings— you, the Chinese, everyone," Ebens believes...
...To show the plight of Asian-Americans in America," he replies, r I ask what that plight is...
...A group calling itself Americans for Justice was formed to persuade Kaufman to impose a stifFer sentence...
...After four days in a coma, Vincent Chin died...
...Specifically, he denies testimony that he made any racial remarks to Chin on the night of the killing...
...Relaxing in his La-Z-Boy recliner, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and white socks, Ebens looks like a cross between George Pep-pard and Oliver North...
...I ask him why he thinks the Asian groups would want to subject him to such pain...
...On the Phil Donahue television show, New York real estate tycoon Donald Trump declares, "The Japanese are taking advantage of us and ripping us off...
...Footage of unemployed auto workers taking a sledgehammer to a Japanese auto has become a media staple...
...Chrysler official Bennett Bid-well, former president of the Hertz Corporation, echoed his boss's feelings when he said the best way to deal with the trade Michael Moore, the former editor of Michigan Voice and Mother Jones, is working on a documentary film about General Motors and Flint...
...I've never been around them...
...Inside, the Senate has just voted to impose a two-year ban on the sale of Toshiba products in the United States...
...Ebens's memory is fuzzy about the night he killed Vincent Chin...
...which barred Chinese from carrying their laundry on public sidewalks, through the roundup and internment of Japanese-Americans at the beginning of World War II, to the recent changes in admissions requirements at Berkeley, designed to reduce the number of Asian students...
...I'm a pussycat...
...He went to work, the day after Chin died, in a dress shirt and tie...
...Across the striptease runway from Chin and his buddies sit Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz...
...He refers to himself as the "official complainer" for the Japanese-American community...
...Detroit isn't the only place that has been hit hard by plant shutdowns...
...Not till we're a minority...
...They have to draw the line somewhere...
...The fervor, in turn, leads to broken bodies in Detroit and broken windows in Oakland...
...Representative Helen Bentley of Maryland has organized nine of her fellow Republicans to join her in taking hefty whacks at a Toshiba boom box...
...And a good case can be made that management rather than labor harbors and spreads most of the anti-Asian hatred...
...His steel-blue eyes are sometimes trusting, sometimes suspicious...
...More words are exchanged in the parking lot...
...We give them the technology and then just let them beat us with it...
...almost 30 per cent of the parts in GM autos are "outsourced"—mostly to foreign factories...
...Obviously, they're ^hooting for something...
...He is not, he insists, a maniac who "just goes down clearing the streets of Asians...
...Earl Henry, president of United Auto Workers Local 598 in Flint, Michigan, told me his union's members "don't blame the Japanese...
...The hate does not well up spontaneously...
...It's time for me to leave and I thank Ebens and his wife for their hospitality...
...He has spent most of his time around the house while his wife has worked at the furniture store where her son, Mike Nitz, is also employed...
...The Rambo mentality," says Wakabayashi, "is being installed in the national psyche...
...A moment later, when Chin gets up and starts toward him, Ebens has second thoughts...
...Hostility toward Asians is on the rise, he says, citing such instances as the English-only proposition enacted in California in 1986 and "neighborhood preservation movements" designed to exclude Asian residents...
...But Chin's assailant, Ronald Ebens, was not—despite widespread reports to the contrary—a "laid-off auto worker...
...imbalance would be to charter the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima...
...They're superstitious about using rear-view mirrors...
...To hell with them...
...One said, "Watch out for Chinese drivers...
...I don't know who the hell they are, and I have absolutely no use for them...
...Chin and his friends take off down the street...
...He is bitter about that: "Somebody's a loyal employee, you never fire them...
Vol. 52 • February 1988 • No. 2
