We Are Detroit. We Are Vincent Chin: An American Legacy

A virtual conversation with Helen Zia, author, activist, and spokesperson for the Estate of Lily and Vincent Chin and an invitation for philanthropy to meet the moment.

Detroit, once the ancestral homelands of the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, is at the center of one of this country’s bloodiest racial uprisings in 1967 between Black citizens and a predominantly white police force. It is the classic Black/White narrative that haunts this nation. Detroit also emerges as a backdrop that leans into the American legacy around racism through the murder of Vincent Chin.

In 1982, during Detroit’s decline as the center of the American auto industry and the rise of Japanese auto manufacturers, two White unemployed auto workers targeted Vincent as the cause of their economic misfortunes and beat him to death. The story of Vincent Chin and Detroit is an important marker in the larger, more complex and interconnected American legacy around race. Forty years have fortified rather than diminished its significance against this contemporary version of anti-Asian violence and this nation’s grappling of anti-Blackness.

The 40th Vincent Chin Remembrance and Rededication is set for June 16-19th live in Detroit to mark the moment and envision the future.