I always find it disturbing when an incident that "I know" turns out to have been quite different from how it's consistently reported and what I believed to be true.
Here's the standard media version of the Chin murder, via NPR last year:
Forty years ago, 27-year-old Vincent Chin was enjoying a night out with his friends in Detroit. It was meant to be a celebration ahead of Chin's upcoming marriage, but he didn't make it to the wedding. That night he was beaten to death by two white men who worked in the auto industry and, according to witnesses, were angry over what they perceived as the loss of American jobs to Japanese imports.
The men targeted Chin because he was Asian – not knowing he was Chinese American, not Japanese. The killing galvanized Asian Americans across the entire country to fight for civil rights. It's a battle that continues today.
