Last week, I attended a screening of the documentary, “A Dream in Doubt,” which tells the story of the first hate crime victim in the aftermath of September 11. A Sikh immigrant named Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot five times in Phoenix, Arizona and died instantly.
Apparently, Balbir had been “mistaken” for being a person of Middle Eastern ethnicity, just like Vincent Chin was a Chinese American who was “mistaken” for being Japanese. However, we need to be careful when using terms like “mistaken identity,” because they create an “us” and “them” mentality.
For example, during the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, some Chinese Americans wore a button that stated: “I’m Chinese, not a Jap.” In other words, “target them, don’t target us.” What happened in the Vincent Chin case is that Asian Americans awakened to the fact that making such ethnic separations is ultimately self-defeating.
It didn’t matter whether Vincent Chin was Chinese or Japanese. He was Asian, and that made him the target of a brutal murder. He was Asian, and that made his life less valuable in the eyes of the judge who let off his murderers with no jail time. The different Asian ethnic enclaves back then realized they had to unite together as an “Asian American” community to have any hope of achieving racial justice for each and every person of Asian descent in America.
That lesson learned was again demonstrated in the aftermath of September 11, when the Japanese American community (drawing from the violation of their civil rights during WWII) came out in support of Arab Americans and South Asians when their civil liberties came under threat.
Our strongest defense against “mistaken identity” hate crimes is to unite with other communities against all hate crimes, regardless of ethnic identity.
Tony Lam
Last week, I attended a screening of the documentary, “A Dream in Doubt,” which tells the story of the first hate crime victim in the aftermath of September 11. A Sikh immigrant named Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot five times in Phoenix, Arizona and died instantly.
Apparently, Balbir had been “mistaken” for being a person of […]
I’m flying high from my trip to the windy city and our first two advanced screenings of VINCENT WHO?.
On April 19, our documentary had a special screening at the 13th annual Asian American Showcase in Chicago. I want to take this chance to especially thank Tim Hugh, the festival director, who believed in the importance of our film’s subject matter […]
Hey folks, Another quick update. We just returned from an exciting trip to Chicago. Director Tony Lam, Executive Producer Catherine Park and yours truly were participating in both the Association of Asian American Studies Conference and the Asian American Film Showcase. Thanks to Theresa Mah and Tim Hugh for the invites! We got to do two special […]
