Olivia Munn will not remain mum over hate against Asian American Pacific Islander communities.
The actress late on Monday condemned an online attack after a hacker interrupted an AAPI advocacy webinar she was hosting with racist imagery and hateful audio messages.
“Today while hosting a gathering of AAPI women and allies in a conversation about how to stop anti-Asian hate, we were targeted by a zoom bombing of horrific, violent, racially charged images and audio,” she revealed Monday.
The “X-Men: Apocalypse” star joined the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, which focuses on empowering AAPI women and girls, and AAPI organizers for the online seminar to mark beauty gurus Amy Liu and Priscilla Tsai’s collaboration for a special Lunar New Year skincare kit.
“While it momentarily disrupted our event, we later resumed because these malicious acts will not stop the conversation,” Munn shared on Instagram. “We were communing to celebrate, elevate and protect the AAPI community and we were subjected to a hate crime in real time. It was a cowardly and unconscionable act.”
She didn’t offer further specifics about the offensive incident.
“But to be clear, the conversation WILL go on,” the 41-year-old first-time mom attested.
An outspoken opponent of anti-Asian sentiment, the Oklahoma City native is the daughter of a Vietnamese refugee and was primarily raised in Tokyo, Japan.
“Cheap tactics like these won’t stop our quest for equality, equity and to stop Asian hate,” she added.
Munn also shared an infographic from the origanization, which revealed that 78% of AAPI women have been affected by anti-Asian racism, with 28% reporting of being called a racial slur, while 26% said they felt unsafe walking outside. Some 18% of respondents experienced discrimination or harassment at work.
Since COVID-19 began at the end of 2019, hate crimes against Asian-Americans have been on the rise, due in part to racist rhetoric by former president Donald Trump, who often referred to coronavirus as “Kung Flu” or the “China Virus.”
NPR reported that more than 9,000 anti-Asian incidents had been reported since the pandemic began.
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