Asian actress Karen Fukuhara recently came forward revealing that she had recently been the victim of an anti-Asian, anti-woman hate crime.
“Today I was struck in the head by a man,” she wrote, “This shit needs to stop. Us women, Asians and the elderly need your help.” Fukuhara noted that physically she was “fine”.
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).” She said.
There are however some issues with the actress’s rhetoric. There is no revelation of a motive in her story, despite her assumption that it was a hate crime on account of her being an Asian woman.
“Stop Asian Hate,” she said in her Tweet, despite seeming unsure of what the man’s actual motive was. Typically, to rule an attack as a hate crime, there would need to be some indication that the attacker is acting out as a result of their victim’s race. This simply does not appear present according to the actress’s own story.
The attacker and victim being of two separate races are certainly is not enough information to classify a hate crime. Assuming Fukuhara is telling the truth about her attack, there is a true motive that has yet to be revealed.
The lack of information doesn’t rule out the possibility of a racially motivated attack but there are also other possibilities. The woman is a well-known actress and may have obsessive fans, or perhaps has anti-fans who hated her performance in the films that she’s been a part of.
Celebrities, especially female celebrities are unfortunate at an elevated risk for attack due to their time in the public eye.