Ken Jeong has donated $50,000 to the families of the victims of the Atlanta spa shootings.
Ken Jeong
The ‘Masked Singer’ judge has handed over the hefty sum to help the families of five of the eight people who lost their lives last week when a gunman opened fire in three different spas in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
A donor listed as Kenneth Jeong made five $10,000 donations to GoFundMe pages for the victims' families, which will support the families of Suncha Kim, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Yong Yue, and Xiaojie Tan.
The donor did not identify himself as the 51-year-old actor and comedian, but People magazine reports they have confirmed he is the one who donated the funds.
The news comes after Ken has been vocal in recent days about the rise as anti-Asian racist incidents, which have been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking about the horrific scenes in Atlanta, he said: "Enough is enough. We're just fed up. Anti-Asian-American crime has risen almost 150 percent in the last year, while overall hate crime went down 7 percent. This is precisely due to weaponising terms such as 'The China Virus' and 'Kung Flu’.
“Even in this particular crime, there's debate whether this crime was racially motivated. But Asian American women are two times as likely to be assaulted in America. This was clearly, clearly racially motivated."
Ken – whose parents were born in South Korea – also insisted he doesn’t have the answers when it comes to “solving racism”, but said people need to be more “tolerant” of others.
He added: "As a guy who used to be a doctor and whose wife is still practicing medicine, I have an idea on how to solve COVID: It's masks, vaccination, common sense, don't be an a**hole. But as a human, I don't know how to solve racism. It takes listening, learning, loving, being tolerant.
“In our particular case, as Asian Americans, this 'Kung Flu' s*** needs to stop. We need to express that loudly. And we are."
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