Film highlights effects of hate crimes on Asian Americans

By Emily McCarter, The De Pauw

“Vincent Who?” was the question on people’s minds as well as the name of the documentary shown on Tuesday night at the Peeler Auditorium.

Filmmaker Curtis Chin

Director of the Cultural Resource Center Vivie Nguyen, organized the viewing event after receiving a forwarded email regarding the documentary, which is about the historic hate crime murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 in Detroit.

“I just thought it was something that our campus hasn’t really seen yet and in terms of Asian-American activism, something important to bring to the forefront and hate crimes in general,” Nguyen said.

In addition to watching the documentary for free, students and guests were invited to a reception in the Peeler Art Center lobby prior to the viewing where they could eat Asian-inspired dishes and talk to Curtis Chin, the creator of the documentary.

Curtis Chin is used to these types of events for his documentary, having toured to over 300 colleges for the viewing of “Vincent Who?”

A native of Detroit, Curtis Chin testified in his documentary after the viewing during a question and answer session that he knew Vincent Chin and remembered the incident occurring when he was a child.

“I vaguely remember being in the back of my parents restaurant and someone coming in and saying that Vincent had just been attacked,” Curtis Chin said.

However, this event didn’t really affect him until he was a grown man with a career in writing for television. He only decided to make the documentary after returning home to Detroit after his parents were in a car accident, and his father had passed away.

“When I was back [in Detroit], I was sort of having a little mini mid-life crisis with what was I doing with myself, writing bad TV shows…there’s got to be something more meaningful to life,’” Curtis Chin said. “That’s when I thought back this case as something that really impacted me.”

Read the full story by Emily McCarter, The De Pauw