Actress Karen Fukuhara is speaking out after being assaulted in an alleged anti-Asian hate crime.
Fukuhara, who stars on the Amazon Prime Video superhero series The Boys, revealed on Instagram a man struck her in the back of the head while she was walking to a cafe to get coffee.
"We made no eye contact before, I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary," she said. "It came to my surprise and my hat flew off. By the time I looked back, he was a few feet away from me (he must have kept walking after hitting me). I thought about confronting him first but he started coming towards me and I didn't think it was worth the risk. After a few seconds of staring at each other, and him yelling at me, he eventually walked away."
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Fukuhara said this was the first time she's been physically assaulted but that she has previously had "racial slurs and hurtful actions" directed toward her, and she wrote that it was "important to raise awareness" that "these hate crimes happen to everyday, regular people." According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, hate crimes against Asian Americans increased 339 percent in 2021.
"This s--t needs to stop," Fukuhara wrote.
Fukuhara also said she "got lucky" because the perpetrator could have been carrying a weapon, but she wrote that she's in "shock" and considering taking self-defense classes. "Why is this something we as 'victims' have to think about?" she asked, adding, "What can we do as a community to prevent these horrible crimes?"
Fukuhara was the latest actress to speak out against anti-Asian hate crimes after Olivia Munn revealed in January a gathering of AAPI women and allies she hosted was targeted by a racist Zoom bombing. "We were communing to celebrate. elevate and protect the AAPI community," Munn said, "and we were subjected to a hate crime in real time."
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