Racism professor mowed down and slurs hurled in anti-Asian attack: 'I’ve been targeted'

A Japanese American professor and Vietnam veteran thinks he may have been involved in a possible hate crime, The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.

American history professor Aki Maehara was riding his electric bicycle one late April evening near his home in Montebello, California, when he was hit by a car, and the driver shouted a racial slur.

Maehara noticed headlights coming closer from a vehicle behind him.

The professor "turned to check his surroundings and saw a sedan speeding toward him," the report said. He tried to turn toward the side, hoping there was a driveway he could pull into, but he was hit by the car.

"I heard someone yell, 'F'g C----! as I got hit, then I heard, 'Go back to C-----land,'" a GoFundMe set up for Maehara said. "As I laid on the ground, he drove away."

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“It sounded suspicious to me because I wear a full-face helmet ... a helmet with a visor,” Maehara said. “No one can see my face. So how the hell did he know I’m Asian?”

Maehara said that he's experienced threats over the past several years, he said, because he teaches the history of racism and racist beliefs in U.S. history at East Los Angeles Community College.

“There’s a long history,” he told the Times. “They’ve picketed my classroom at East L.A. College. Chicano Republicans came after me and picketed me at Cal State Long Beach. The KKK came to my classroom at 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.”

"I had tensions from a former housemate who had ties to white supremacist groups and had received threats from an individual in these hate groups," he said, according to the GoFundMe.

He feared the high cost of an ambulance ride, so he asked friends to take him to the veterans hospital in Long Beach.

One of his biggest problems is that after spending three days at the V.A. hospital, he was sent home but is unable to "prepare meals, bathe himself, clean his blood-stained bed sheets or change his bandages." The V.A. was supposed to pick him up for an appointment to change his bandages, but he said it failed to do so.

"Aki is rightfully concerned about the possibility of infection," the donation page said.

The friend who set up the page said they want to raise money so they can get a professional home health aide.

"The Montebello Police Department is currently investigating and seeking evidence as an, 'attempted vehicular homicide,'" the GoFundMe page said.

Stop AAPI Hate released new research in February showing a surge after President Donald Trump's 2024 election victory.

"The data looks at online slurs and threats of violence against Asian communities in monitored Domestic Violent Extremist (DVE) spaces in the U.S. between January 2023 and January 2025. It reveals significant rises in anti-Asian hate online between election day (November 2024) and the inauguration (January 2025), with the largest target being South Asian people," a press release from the group said.