Legacy
The attack was considered by many a hate crime, but pre-dated hate crime laws in the United States. Nevertheless, during a 1998 House of Representatives hearing on the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 1997, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. suggested that the problem in making people sufficiently aware of the causes for and injustices of the Vincent Chin case was that it was a political "hot potato" that did not get picked up for "political reasons" with respect to the automobile industry.
Chin's case has been cited by some Asian Americans to support the idea that they are seen as not fully citizens or "perpetual foreigners" compared to "real" Americans. Chin's mother, Lily Chin, stated: "What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail, maybe for their whole lives... Something is wrong with this country."
In September 1987, not wanting to be reminded of her son's tragedy, Vincent Chin's mother, Lily Chin, moved from Oak Park, Michigan, back to Guangzhou, China, where she had grown up. She returned to the United States for medical treatment in late 2001 and died on June 9, 2002. Prior to her death, Lily Chin had established a scholarship in Vincent's memory, to be administered by American Citizens for Justice.
Read more about this topic: Murder Of Vincent Chin
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)