HONOLULU (AP) – Growing up in Washington state, Douglas Chin says he was the stereotypical “smart Chinese kid that got straight As.” His parents taught him not to stick out too much and used to say “don’t poke the lion.”
So when Chin, now the Hawaii attorney general, was deciding on whether to challenge the Trump administration’s latest travel ban, he understood those who said that it wasn’t the state’s fight.
But the Stanford University-educated lawyer stepped into the spotlight, making Hawaii the first state to challenge President Trump’s revised travel ban – and convince a federal judge to temporarily block it before it took effect.
His motivation was personal, he said. Chin said he felt as if he was invisible during his time in an overwhelmingly white suburban Seattle high school, and wanted to fight for an invisible minority in Hawaii: Muslims.
“It really hits home with me,” he said. “It worries about me about this society and what’s happening.”