ILOILO CITY – With the growing racial attacks against Asians in America largely due to the pandemic, a Filipino has been harrassed twice while riding the subway in New York City in less than a week.

“A black man kicked me in the leg,” Alex Vidal, 51, and a former newspaper editor here, recalled as he rode the F subway train bound for Queens last Thursday.

Vidal said in an online interview Monday that he was scared and got off the next station where he reported the incident to two New York Police Department (NYPD) cops.

Six days earlier on March 12, Vidal was also verbally harassed during another subway ride in Manhattan as he was mistaken for a Chinese.

Vidal recalled that a black man initially verbally harassed a fellow passenger, an East Asian woman in her 20s.

“She looked scared. I presume that’s why she got off at the next station. He also thought I was Chinese,” Vidal said.

In between curses, the black man kept saying “Go back to China!”
By that time, Vidal was the only one left at the subway car.

He said he remained calm and started video recording with his cellphone. 

“I didn’t panic.  I didn’t talk to back. I didn’t know if he had a weapon or not,” Vidal said.

For Vidal, the two consecutive harassments are an indication that the threat against Asians is real as they are being blamed for the negative impact of COVID-19.

“Some ignorant and hateful individuals think the Chinese brought the coronavirus in the United States. It has gone from bad to worse,” Vidal said.

Vidal said that the harassment against Filipinos and other Asians may be underreported as some are scared of the backlash of reporting.

WATCH: