After posting a yard sign directing Chinese people to stay off his grass, a California man says he isn’t being racist, just specific.

The sign, which El Monte resident William Alarcon made and posted on his lawn Monday night, read: “Chinese, keep your dogs off my grass. Respect your neighbors.” He taped a separate “Keep off the grass” sign on top.

Alarcon told ABC Eye Witness News that the sign was directed at his neighbors, sisters Alexis and Rose Anne Yu. The women are Filipina, not Chinese.

“I’m not being racist or anything, I’m being specific,” Alarcon, who says he is Native American, told the news station. “The Hispanic woman was doing it and I spoke to her and she stopped doing it.”

ABC Eye Witness News The sign William Alarcon posted in his yard.

The Yu sisters told the news station that they saw Alarcon putting up the sign on Monday night while on their nightly walk with their dogs. When they passed his house, Alarcon told them to “read the sign,” they said.

Alexis Yu took a photo of Alarcon’s message and emailed it to the El Monte police department.

“I don’t understand,” she said of the sign. “Why would you write something like that? And to direct it to a race for that matter.”

Alarcon apparently backed down after his sign made the news. It was gone by Wednesday afternoon, ABC reported.