The Differential of Appearance: Asian American Cultural Studies

Abstract

Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996, $16.95). Pp. 252. ISBN 0 8223 1864 4.

Paul R. Spickard, Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformation of an Ethnic Group (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996, $28.95). Pp. 225. ISBN 0 8057 7841 1.

Gordon Chang, Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and his Internment Writings, 1942–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, £35.00). Pp. 552. ISBN 0 8047 2733 3.

Appearances can be deceiving, sometimes they are fatal. In 1982, Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American, entered a Detroit bar with some friends. Ronald Ebens, a foreman at a Chrysler automobile plant, and his stepson Michael Nitz, a laid-off Chrysler assembly-line worker, also came into the same bar. It is uncertain what exactly prompted Ebens to derisively call Chin a “Jap” and scoff: “It's because of you motherfuckers that we're out of work!” What is indisputable, however, is the sequence of events which took place after the insult. In the wake of the abusive remark, a fist-fight erupted between Ebens and Chin. The brawlers were evicted from the bar. Ebens and Nitz went to their car and grabbed a baseball bat. Observing that Ebens was in possession of a bat, Chin and his companions fled from the bar's parking lot. Unwilling to be thwarted by this escape, Ebens and Nitz stalked Chin. After a twenty minute pursuit, Ebens and Nitz cornered Chin. Nitz held Chin while Ebens beat him on the head with the baseball bat. Four days after this attack, Chin died from his head wounds.

What makes the murder of Vincent Chin particularly hideous is the perverse element of mistaken identity that led to his death. Ronald Ebens took Chin for a “Jap.” At one level of interpretation, this visual blunder comments on the blind spots of racist thinking, where categorical forms of reasoning isolate us between our prejudices and our self-serving interests. Ebens saw an Asian face and automatically made it the target of his frustration. At another level of interpretation, Eben's racial slur, although inaccurate in ethnically identifying Chin, strangely articulates the conceptual incongruities and cultural displacements that occur in representations of ethnicity and race. Chin's physical appearance made him vulnerable to ethnic mistranslation and an eventual victim of racist misrepresentation. In short, there is (much like pronouncing two people husband and wife) a performative aspect to Ebens's misrecognition of Chin's identity. To put it grimly, Chin's figurative transformation literally concluded in his execution.