By Emil Guillermo

On Juneteenth, there was a lesson for everyone in America when pro-slavery forces couldn’t prevent all of the U.S. from getting the truth. Never give up hope. The truth does win out.

That’s why Juneteenth is as close as Asian Americans get to a national holiday commemorating the fight against anti-Asian American violence.

I’m not taking anything away from Juneteenth.

I’m adding to it.

You’ve got to admit it’s a strange holiday.

To be true to the spirit of Juneteenth, maybe we should celebrate it not on June 19, but maybe on the 29th.

Or just put it off for three years.

That would adequately mock what actually happened. The Emancipation Proclamation, announced on Sept. 22, 1862, was the beginning of the end slavery when it went into effect 100 days later on Jan. 1, 1863.

But no one told the slaves in Texas until June 19, 1865— two-and-a-half years later.

Paperwork error? Slow wi-fi? Whites were so reluctant to give up the immoral activity of slavery in Texas they gaslighted the Emancipation Proclamation.

I remember hearing about Juneteenth when I lived in the Lone Star state in the ’70s and ’80s. (Not the 1870s, the 1970s and 1980s.)

But isn’t it amazing how the push to make it a national holiday didn’t succeed until 2021? 156 years after 1865.

And even when the holiday was announced, most people still happily lived in ignorance. A Gallup survey found that more than 60% of Americans know “nothing at all” or only “a little bit” about Juneteenth.

What you need to know is that 14 House Republicans voted against the holiday in 2021. For the most part, it’s the same group mucking things up for current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who deserves to be mucked up, but for other reasons, not Juneteenth.

And so, for the record, this is the original Congressional Juneteenth Hall of Shame: the Republicans who voted against the federal holiday, which leaves them looking like pro-slavery Republicans

Mo Brooks (AL), Andy Biggs (AZ), Andrew Clyde (GA), Scott DesJarlais (TN), Paul Gosar (AZ), Ronny Jackson (TX), Doug LaMalfa (CA), Thomas Massie (KY), Tom McClintock (CA), Ralph Norman (NC), Mike Rogers (AL), Matt Rosendale (MT), Chip Roy (TX), Tom Tiffany (WI).

These are the same folks who want to stop the teaching of U.S. history claiming it’s “critical race theory.” Of course, It’s nothing of the sort. The holiday simply makes us appreciate that truth and justice eventually do win out.

The good forces have worked overtime to bend that arc of justice since Juneteenth.

That’s why it’s a federal holiday and a day off for many, a reminder to stay vigilant forever.

THE VINCENT CHIN COINCIDENCE 

So, we respect Juneteenth, but one particular coincidence of justice delayed must be pointed out that took place on June 19, 1982.

That’s when Vincent Chin, attending his own bachelor party, crossed paths with Ronald Ebens in a strip club in Detroit.

Ebens, a white auto worker in an industry under siege by Japanese imports, saw Chin, and his brain must have registered “Japanese,” even though Chin was Chinese American.

I asked Ebens about this in 2012 and he denies the racial subtext of the incident: “It had nothing to do with the auto industry or Asians or anything else. Never did, never will. I could have cared less about that. That’s the biggest fallacy of the whole thing.”

Really? Chin’s friends, who were there, testified to the contrary.

Ebens may have told me all that to lessen the racial aspect. But he couldn’t deny the most important fact.

After leaving the strip club, he hunted down Chin, found him, and then swung the bat at Chin’s head resulting in his death.

Now 41 years after, Ebens has never served time for the murder.

Nor has Ebens – ordered to pay $1.5 million to the Chin family in a wrongful death settlement–ever paid his debt to the Chin family.

It’s justice denied and delayed for the Chin family.

And Ebens knows he’s at fault for all of it.

“I’m as much to blame,” he admitted to me about Chin’s death. “I should’ve been smart enough to just call it a day. After [Chin and his friends] started to disperse, it was time to get in the car and go home.”

But he didn’t.

Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, got to Chin in that McDonalds parking lot, and as Nitz stood behind Chin, Ebens swung the bat and delivered the fatal blow.

“I went over that a hundred, maybe a thousand times in my mind the last 30 years,” Ebens told me in 2012. “It doesn’t make any sense of any kind that I would swing a bat at his head when my stepson is right behind him. That makes no sense at all.”

The murder doesn’t make sense. Nor does the application of justice, which has only benefitted Chin’s killer.

Chin was in a coma at the Henry Ford Hospital on June 19th, the 20th, the 21st, the 22nd, and then on the 23rd, he didn’t wake up.

But an entire generation of Asian Americans did.

For those born in the Civil Rights Era, Chin was the call to social justice, an awakening. It was just the first wave.

Since then, the Asian American population has grown to more than 23 million people. And now, a new generation is discovering the impact and the importance of the Chin case, at a time when hate crimes against Asian Americans have exploded.

What we learn is our solidarity and common ground with others in America’s BIPOC communities.  The most famous hate crime in Asian American history is connected to the very day, Juneteenth. It’s a sign.

In cases of justice denied and delayed, Juneteenth gives us hope.

Emil Guillermo is a veteran Bay Area journalist and commentator. He does a reality talk show on www.amok.com

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