Olympic gold medalist Suni Lee said she was pepper sprayed in a racist attack last month in Los Angeles.
In a recent interview with PopSugar, the gymnast said she was attacked while she and her girlfriends — all of Asian descent — were waiting for a ride. A group in a car speeding by started yelling racist slurs and a passenger sprayed Lee's arm with pepper spray, she said.
"I was so mad, but there was nothing I could do or control because they skirted off," Lee told the magazine. "I didn't do anything to them, and having the reputation, it's so hard because I didn't want to do anything that could get me into trouble. I just let it happen."
As the first Hmong American to represent the U.S. in the Olympics, the 18-year-old Lee astounded the world by winning a gold medal in the women's all-around competition during the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. She is in her freshman year at Auburn University in Alabama and was in Los Angeles for rehearsals for an appearance on "Dancing With the Stars" when the incident occurred.
Russell Jeung, an Asian American studies professor at San Francisco University and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, said Lee's response is common among people who are targeted in a hate crime and feel like they let the incident happen or they were powerless.
"It's not her fault," Russell said. "But she's taking control and she's challenging the racism by sharing the story. She may say the incident happened, but she's taking control of the situation by speaking out."
Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 76% in Los Angeles County last year, according to a report from the county's Commission on Human Relations, mirroring a disturbing trend in many other jurisdictions as physical and verbal attacks on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders rose during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of the 44 anti-Asian hate crimes reported in L.A. County in 2020, more than three-quarters involved physical violence — a marked increase from 58% in 2018, the commission's report, released Wednesday, said.
In 2019, 25 anti-Asian hate crimes were reported.
The data in the report were compiled from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and more than 40 city police departments, including Los Angeles', as well as several school police agencies and community organizations.
Hate crimes include violent crimes such as homicide and assault as well as some nonviolent crimes such as racial graffiti.
Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit group that tracks discrimination and attacks against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, said there were 9,081 total incidents nationwide involving physical assaults, civil rights violations, online harassment and other forms of discrimination or hate crimes. The organization tracked another 1,200 reports of incidents of anti-immigrant comments and other non-violent incidents nationwide from March 19, 2020, through June 30, 2021.
-----
Times staff writer Jaclyn Cosgrove contributed to this report.
