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Former UNC Tar Heel Kane Ma details the night he was brutally attacked

When Kane Ma came to, it was dark outside. Other than a few flickering street lights off in the distance, the night enveloped his world.

So as he regained consciousness, Ma felt around: at the pavement he was laying on, minutes from downtown Chapel Hill; the parked car he had tucked behind; finally his forehead and the rest of his face.

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He felt blood. A lot of blood.

Ma scrambled to find his phone, frantically calling friends until one arrived and took him to the emergency room. He was diagnosed with a broken nose, a concussion and a fractured skull, which extended from his forehead to his left eye. Ma shared some of these details in a LinkedIn post earlier this month — the first time he publicly revealed the events of March 9, 2019 — but not all of them. In a conversation last week with The Athletic, he laid out all that had happened to him and decided it was time — amid a surge of racism and hate crimes against Asian-Americans nationwide — to share his story.

“For awareness, first and foremost: that this has been existing for a while,” Ma says. “Before Atlanta. Before COVID … letting people know, this is very real.”

The first thing to know about Ma, at least as it pertains to him being in Chapel Hill that night, is that he wasn’t any random student. Ma played on junior varsity men’s basketball team at North Carolina before being called up to the varsity in December of his senior year, 2017-18. He spent that spring, before graduation, traveling the country with a team that was a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

After graduation, Ma continued his playing career overseas, for the Macau Black Bears of the ASEAN Basketball League. He lived in southern China, only returning to the United States in March 2019 when his season ended. That week was also the second UNC-Duke game of the season, this one in Chapel Hill. Ma returned to campus for the game, a 79-70 Tar Heels win, before heading out to Franklin Street to celebrate. Later that night, Ma phoned a friend, who told him to come to McCauley Street — a few minutes walk from where he was.

As soon as he turned down McCauley, Ma says he saw three men walking his direction from the other end of the street. As they got nearer, they started using racial slurs, Ma says. At this point, Ma says he started backing up. But the trio got closer and closer, “cornering” him, while moving at a faster pace. The last thing Ma remembers, before being put in a headlock, was what one of the men said: What, you’re not gonna do some kung fu on us?

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Soon after, he lost consciousness.

Ma spent the night in the emergency room. Doctors told him not to do any physical activity for three or four months, or until his head had fully healed. That meant Ma — who was excited about going back overseas for a second season — couldn’t do so anymore. The injuries he sustained essentially ended his playing career.

And while it took months for Ma’s injuries to heal, it took even longer to process the events of that night. “A lot of nights, I would wake up in a full body of cold sweats, just shivering,” he says.

In the weeks that followed, Ma says he tracked down and identified the three men. He went to the police, who began an investigation; Ma was brought in for questioning about two weeks after. He still had deep cuts on his forehead, around his mouth and his chin. Eventually, the investigator shared his findings — or lack thereof.

“The investigators told me it was my word against their word,” Ma says, “and since there were three of them and only one of me, it was basically like I was on the short end of the stick.”

In time, the three men admitted to an investigator they had put their hands on Ma, but only in self-defense, Ma remembers the investigator telling him. Basically, the three men said they had only put Ma in a chokehold out of self-defense, and he fell after losing consciousness, causing his injuries. But that version of events, according to multiple medical professionals Ma spoke with during follow-up appointments, didn’t match his injuries.

“They all said, this was no doubt an assault — and just by the state of my injuries, there’s no way I just fell. They said, (the guys) bashed my head into the ground and hit me multiple times in the face,” Ma says. “Now I feel very much at odds with the police. It seems like they don’t believe what I say. It seems like they’re siding with those three guys. And in a lot of ways, it kind of made me feel like I was the bad guy for even bringing it up to them and reporting it. For inconveniencing them.”

Ma continued pursuing his legal options, but was told by the district attorney and other lawyers that he didn’t have a case. It all came back to that he-said, he-said issue. At that point, now months later, Ma was exhausted by the process. He wanted to put it all behind him, he says, and get on with his life.

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A little over a year later, in May 2020, Ma was again back on campus for his younger sister’s graduation from UNC. Again he went out to celebrate with friends, bouncing among bars on Franklin Street. As Ma and four friends were leaving a bar at the end of the night, Ma saw the same three men walking in his direction.

“As soon as we kind of make eye contact with each other,” Ma says, “we both know who the other party was.”

Only one other person with Ma knew the details of what had happened with him earlier. Ma says there was back and forth between the parties, but he ultimately told the four people with him — knowing there was a chance for violence — to let it go. Before going their separate directions, one of the men said something else that still sticks with Ma: White people have power.

“I was just shocked to hear that. I was left pretty much speechless,” Ma says. “It made me think — especially how the prior months had went with the police — that they actually did feel untouchable. That there wasn’t anything I could do against them.”

So why share all of this now, and why on LinkedIn?

Ma says he’s fortunate to have fully recovered physically from the attack, although he does have lasting scars. And he credits a strong support system of family and close friends with helping him try to process what happened.

But the racism Ma experienced that night was not the first he had encountered. In his LinkedIn post, which now has more than 300,000 impressions and almost 13,000 comments, Ma wrote he had already experienced the “recurring theme of racism in America.”

“Especially growing up in North Carolina and traveling to different parts of the country, the concept of racism to me has just been very prevalent throughout my life. Whether it was through the term I see a lot — microaggressions — or just flat-out racist comments that have been said to me, yeah, that happens almost every day,” Ma says. “Whether (something) was supposed to be a joke or whether it was supposed to have malicious intent, the theme of it is discrimination and racism toward the way I look.”

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The reason Ma says he decided to share his story now is because of what’s happening across the United States. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge of anti-Asian and anti-Asian-American hate. A study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism found that while hate crimes in 16 of America’s largest cities decreased by about 7 percent in 2020, that number among Asian-Americans skyrocketed 150 percent. Another study, this one by advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate, uncovered 3,795 reports of hate incidents against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders between March 19, 2020, and Feb. 28, 2021. Congress is debating the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, legislation aimed at combatting rising discrimination and violence against Asians and Asian-Americans; President Joe Biden has urged for the bill to “swiftly pass.”

All of this was punctuated on March 16, when eight people — six of them Asian-American women — were killed in a series of shootings at massage parlors and spas in Atlanta. Those events, Ma says, made him think of his mother and younger sister.

At that point Ma decided to share what happened to him. Ma says he chose LinkedIn because that’s where he thought his story might gain the most traction with companies, business leaders and decision-makers — people who in theory would be able to elevate the issue.

Other than just awareness, Ma says he hopes a few things come from him sharing his experiences. He mentions school curriculums, and how growing up in Greensboro, N.C., he “didn’t ever really learn too much about Asian-American history, or even violence or racism toward Asians.” Ma says he had to educate himself about those topics, but would love to see better representation in what students today are learning.

But more than that, Ma says he now understands the value of his post in terms of encouragement. That’s evident from the countless comments, mentions and shares related to his first post. There’s more to it than that, though.

“Something I saw, and something that makes sense to me, is when someone shares something personal and vulnerable about their lives, it gives power to others who also have gone through similar things, for them to also share,” Ma says. “Initially when it first happened to me, I felt embarrassed that it happened to me, you know? But coming out with it, I’ve come to realize and seen in my messages — and other people that have shared — that other people have been through some tough things, experiences that are very powerful.

“So it’s also just encouragement for others to be free, to realize their stories and their voices are very important as well.”

(Photo: Peyton Williams / UNC / Getty)

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