“The Boys” star Karen Fukuhara urged people to “Stop Asian hate” as she opened up about being attacked while going for coffee recently.
The actress is one of the latest victims in a growing number of horrific attacks on people of Asian descent in the U.S.
Fukuhara spoke about the incident in a bid to raise awareness, with her slideshow Instagram message including: “I rarely share about my private life but something happened today that I thought was important.
“I was walking to a cafe for some coffee and a man struck me in the back of my head. It came out of nowhere. We made no eye contact before, I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.
“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).”
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Fukuhara explained how she thought about confronting him but 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,” Fukuhara said.
She added that unfortunately she’s experienced “racial slurs” and “hurtful actions” in the past, but this was the first time she’d been physically harmed.
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“I write this, because I’ve had conversations with multi-racial friends of mine that had no idea these hate crimes happen to everyday, regular people,” Fukuhara shared.
She added that she’d thought about taking self-defence classes, but then questioned: “Why is this something we as ‘victims’ have to think about? What satisfaction are these perpetrators getting from hitting women, Asians, the ELDERLY?”
“They need to be held accountable,” she went on, then asked, “What can we do as a community to prevent these horrible crimes?”
Fukuhara was immediately inundated with messages, with Olivia Munn commenting, “I’m so grateful you’re safe.”
Chace Crawford added, “F this person!! Hope you’re ok this is awful.”