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Ronald Ebens? If you’re Asian American, you should know his name by heart, just as any American would know John Wilkes Booth. Sirhan Sirhan. Or Lee Harvey Oswald.

True, the aforementioned trio assassinated and murdered presidents.

Ebens didn’t strike and kill a president—just an Asian American with a dream. It is a case that is, if not the most heinous hate crime toward an Asian American ever, then certainly the most impactful one in history.

In a Detroit suburb in 1982, Ebens hit Vincent Chin with a baseball bat that resulted in Chin’s death.

Yet, if you don’t know or remember Ebens by name, it’s understandable.

Most people don’t even remember Chin.

After the killing in 1982 came documentaries like “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” and “Vincent Who?” The titles were a clear indicator of the great public ignorance about the case.

As I write this penultimate column in this space, I admit I didn’t know much about the case until I began to home-base my column on the AALDEF website in 2010, 28 years after the killing.

And then on a round-number anniversary, the 30th in 2012, I finally hounded down the killer, Ronald Ebens, in Nevada by phone. He told me his story.

I wanted to hear from him personally, not to judge him, but to see how after all those years, he could live with himself, knowing that he took a life and never paid the price for his actions.

I told Ebens that as a journalist, I wouldn’t judge him, but that I would report accurately what he said.I certainly don’t condone what he did to Chin, but some friends of mine no longer talk to me because of the column. They say I gave him a platform to speak.

As I see it, I merely wanted to understand why Ebens killed an Asian American.

I have written my column for nearly 30 years now on Asian American issues, but that one column went viral more than any other I’ve written. I remember being in the Field Museum in Chicago at the Genghis Khan exhibit marveling at how Khan had “invented” a postal system. Meanwhile, in the modern day, my digital phone was blowing up from the response to the column. No other column I’ve ever written has had that kind of response.

Read it here: https://www.aaldef.org/blog/ronald-ebens-the-man-who-killed-vincent-chin-apologizes-30-years-later/

As I wind down my tenure here, I’ve written a lot about Chin because for a generation of Asian Americans, his death was the wake-up call. Chin made people see their lives in a political way. Asian Americans finally realized that we had to stand up, speak out. We had to fight.

Among the Chin columns throughout the years was one from 2017, about the podcast I did with author Helen Zia, who worked in the auto industry in Detroit when she organized the group that first sought justice for Chin’s family. What I found remarkable was that in 1982, Zia told me civil rights attorneys in Michigan still saw “civil rights” as a Black and White issue. Unbelievably, there was a doubt that Asian Americans counted in the civil rights fight.

Make no mistake, we count. https://www.aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-lessons-from-vincent-chin-murder-35-years-ago-podcast-helen-zia/

More recently, I saw Chin’s death as a moment for reflection of where we are as a community. Using the time frame of the Chin murder, and the time spent in a coma, I advocated using those days to consider the historical struggle of Asian Americans, and then end by awakening with a renewed sense of purpose.

This one is from 2022. https://www.aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-four-decades-since-five-days-of-pain-a-way-to-remember-vincent-chin-and-forget-not-forgive-his-killer/

And one from 2017. https://www.aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-after-five-day-of-solidarity-for-vincent-chin-get-ready-for-the-new-ice-age/

I’ve often said my columns help provide a timeline of Asian American history.

My very first column on this AALDEF site was about a potential hate crime. But the Asian American was the suspected perp, not the victim. It’s the story of the suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi after being pranked by his Asian American roommate, Dharun Ravi, https://www.aaldef.org/blog/hate-crime-for-rutgers-outers/

It wasn’t a joke. But it nearly turned into a double tragedy:

https://www.aaldef.org/blog/after-the-ravi-verdict-a-need-for-compassion-clarity/

https://www.aaldef.org/blog/ravi-sentence-fair-and-balanced/

Beyond hate crimes, that first year of columns included most of the major themes in our American struggle–for example, representation in our culture, specifically in TV and films. It’s more important than people think. The culture is a mirror. When we don’t see ourselves, do we belong?

SNL has always been a favorite barometer of mine. In 2010, they couldn’t get their Asians right. Hu Jun Tao played by Bill Hader? https://www.aaldef.org/blog/snls-hu-jintao-a-new-charlie-chan-ism/

Of course, now thanks to Bowen Yang, as in the case this weekend, that Thai mini rhino blowing up the internet can be played by an Asian on SNL.

Not so in 2010.

Back then too, politicians like Nikki Haley were finding their way. https://www.aaldef.org/blog/on-california-nikki-haley-and-identity-politics/

But now we have Kamala Harris, the first Asian American who could be president. I wrote a lot about politics in this space.

Jimmy Carter is 100? Read about my visit to Sunday School with Jimmy in 2016 here: https://www.aaldef.org/blog/emil-guillermo-post-911-jimmy-carter-hillary-clinton-sunny-wells/

You can also find all I’ve written about all the presidents and elections since 2010, and on Harris dating back to 2019.

But this past weekend was not like any other.

Was Harris the victim of a hate crime?

On Saturday in Wisconsin, her opponent, Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president convicted on 34 felony counts, absolutely lost it when he denigrated Harris.

“Kamala is mentally impaired,” the former president said. “She’s incompetent. She’s not a smart person. If Kamala is re-elected, your town and every town just like it, all across Wisconsin and all across the country, the heartland, the coast, it doesn’t matter. We’ll be transformed into a Third World hellhole.”

Trump’s not quite Ronald Ebens, but he’s filled with rage toward an Asian American. That Vice President Harris is a presidential candidate and no ordinary AAPI indicates progress.

But to hear Trump viciously and wrongfully rant-attack Harris shows that hate is an enduring strategy in 2024.

It only works against us if we don’t rise and fight against it.

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NOTE: I will talk about this column and other matters on “Emil Amok’s Takeout,” my AAPI micro-talk show. Live @2p Pacific. Livestream on Facebook; my YouTube channel; and Twitter. Catch the recordings on www.amok.com.