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When Vincent Chin, a Chinese American groom-to-be, was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat by two white Detroit autoworkers in 1982, his loved ones’ cries for justice fell on deaf ears.
It took twelve full days before the media reported his killing — without recognizing the racism involved, remembers Curtis Chin, the nephew of Vincent Chin’s best man. Nine months later, judge Charles Kaufman handed the perpetrators just three years’ probation and a $3,780 fine, reasoning that “These aren’t the kind of men you send to jail.”
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