“Critical Race Theory”? That’s a term I’ll leave for the protestors at local school boards to shout about. Serious scholars have more important work. Me, I’m just a journalist engaged in what I’ve dubbed as “comparative race experience.” That’s when the damage is done and we all compare notes and find that people of color were treated, othered, and disrespected similarly by perps who were generally the same color.
In the case of Juneteenth, we have a genuine opportunity for Black and Asian solidarity.
With the federal holiday, the public is now more explicitly aware about Juneteenth and how slaves in Texas worked overtime when no one bothered to tell them the Emancipation Proclamation was given more than two years prior.
Perhaps that’s an example of the 19th century’s version of “Uncritical Race Theory,” where ignorance ruled.
What’s that have to do with Asian American icon Vincent Chin? He had a noteworthy June 19th.
On June 19, 1982 in Detroit, Ronald Ebens, a white auto worker, got in a fight with Chin that ended up with Ebens striking Chin twice to the head with a baseball bat. Chin, just 27 at the time, was in a coma until he died on June 23.
Ebens’ killing of Chin is considered the most infamous individual hate crime in Asian American history, mostly because the murderer has done no time for the crime.
