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.
“An Octoroon in the Kindling”: American
Vernacular & Blackface Minstrelsy in 1930s Hollywood
