Singer Amber Liu, who gained fame as a member of K-pop girl group f(x), has issued an apology for saying a Black man handcuffed after eating a sandwich on a train platform in San Francisco “f—ing deserved it” for being “super disrespectful.”
According to Soompi, Liu made her comments about the interaction shown in the following clip, which went viral on social media earlier this month. Many considered the situation a product of racial profiling against Black Americans.
Liu was reacting to a clip of the incident that showed the man arguing that the police officer was not being fair by attempting to detain him.
In her appearance in a now-deleted video posted on the Just Kidding News YouTube channel, Liu said people should know their rights but “don’t have to act like that towards a police officer.”
She faced a wave of backlash on social media on Sunday, with people suggesting that her reaction was discriminatory and an example of lack of solidarity among people of color. Billboard reports that the singer’s name trended worldwide on Twitter for several hours after a clip of her comments began circulating online.
Later that night, Liu released an apology on her Twitter, writing that she made an “ignorant, snap judgment.” She added that she supports the #BlackLivesMatter movement and has “always stood for equality.”
According to MTV, Liu moved from California to Korea when she was 16 and has returned a decade later to relaunch a solo pop career in America. Part of the Taiwanese American’s apology noted that she should have been more aware of “how the systemic racism in the United States has continued and gotten worse” while she was overseas.
While some people thanked Liu for apologizing and encouraged her to continue educating herself, others took issue with the idea that the singer could truly have been unaware of racial tensions in America. Liu replied to one critical tweet saying she was thankful for being called out.
The situation also sparked social media conversation about the struggles of being a Black K-pop fan when the history of the K-pop industry includes idols who have done blackface, worn dreads or cornrows for comeback concepts and made comments considered to be racially offensive.
“This is huge glaring example of Kpop and how Black culture is repeatedly used as an aesthetic for music and fashion, but beyond that it is generally ignored,” one person tweeted.
In response to one person’s reminder that Black people did not have to forgive her, Liu wrote that she would do her best “to earn back the trust from the community.”
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