Olympic gold medalist Suni Lee says she was attacked in racist incident in LA

Olympic gold-medal successful gymnast Suni Lee mentioned she was the sufferer of a racist assault in October.

Lee told PopSugar that when she was out with buddies in Los Angeles one night time, a bunch rushing by in a automotive yelled racial slurs and that one passenger within the automotive sprayed her within the arm with pepper spray because the automotive drove off.

“I used to be so mad, however there was nothing I might do or management as a result of they skirted off,” she informed PopSugar. “I did not do something to them, and having the repute, it is so exhausting as a result of I did not need to do something that might get me into hassle. I simply let it occur.”

Lee, a Hmong American, was with buddies, who had been all additionally of Asian descent. She mentioned the group used the time period “ching chong” and informed the group to “return to the place they got here from.”

Again in July, Lee turned the primary Hmong American to symbolize the US within the Olympics. She informed PopSugar that she has a tough time understanding the hate crimes in opposition to Asian Individuals, and that whereas it’s tough to talk about racial injustice, she is aware of the significance her voice carries.

Stop AAPI Hate reported in August that there have been 9,081 hate incidents since March 19, 2020, and that the quantity spiked from 6,603 to 9,081 throughout the interval between April and June 2021.

The report said that there have been 4,548 hate incidents in 2020 and 4,533 in 2021. It discovered that 63.7 p.c of the instances had been verbal harassment, 16.5 p.c had been shunning, 13.7 p.c had been bodily assault, 11 p.c had been civil rights violations and eight.3 p.c had been on-line harassment.