A Japanese American professor who teaches the history of racism and racist beliefs in the U.S. at East Los Angeles Community College is recovering after being the victim of a possible hate crime, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The April 29 incident unfolded at around 10 p.m. on Merle Drive in Montebello, not far from 71-year-old Aki Maehara’s home.
In an interview with The Times, Maehara said he was riding his electric bike when he spotted a sedan heading straight for him. Moments before the motorist hit him, he said he heard someone curse and yell out a racial slur aimed at people of Chinese descent.
The collision sent the 71-year-old Vietnam veteran through a resident’s yard and into a brick wall.
He told the outlet that he then heard a man telling him to get out of the country while cursing him and using another racial slur before speeding away.
Maehara, who suffered severe injuries to his face, hips, elbows and lower back, told The Times that he called friends for a ride to the VA hospital in Long Beach because a ride in an ambulance would have been too expensive.
The professor believes he may have been targeted because he wears a full-face helmet while riding his bike, so a passerby wouldn’t have known he was Asian, and it’s not the first time he’s been in the crosshairs of people who don’t seem to like his views.
“There’s a long history. They’ve picketed my classroom at East L.A. College. Chicano Republicans came after me and picketed me at Cal State Long Beach,” he told The Times. “The KKK came to my classroom in Cal State Long Beach when I was teaching a course on the U.S. Vietnam War. This is not the first time I’ve been targeted.”
A GoFundMe was organized by Glorya Cabrera, a friend, to help Maehara with the expense of professional home health care.
So far, Montebello police have not arrested anyone and told The Times that they’ve been unable to locate any security footage of the incident, though they continue to investigate.
As for Maehara, the 71-year-old recently made the decision to return to his classroom with just four weeks left in the semester, saying he refused to “abandon his students,” according to Cabrera.
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