A Black Man Was in His Building's Lobby. A White Neighbor Accused Him of Not Living There.
“What are you doing in my building?” a white man asked a young black man in the lobby of an Upper East Side apartment building. “You don’t live here.” And so begins the latest viral video in which a white person accosts a black person for no apparent reason.
In this case, Chika Okafor, 29, a producer for the sports website Bleacher Report, was waiting in the lobby of his apartment building last Wednesday for a Lyft to take him to his company’s holiday party. But as Mr. Okafor and a friend, also black, stood in the lobby, the unidentified white man berated them.
“I’ve never seen you before,” Mr. Okafor’s white neighbor said. “I’ve lived here 27 years.” Mr. Okafor says he has lived in the building, a four-story walk-up on First Avenue near 74th Street, since last year.
The neighbor similarly accosted a white couple just hours after the encounter with Mr. Okafor. Janah Reynolds, who is visiting New York for the holidays with her husband and two sons, was renting an apartment on the first floor of the building through Airbnb. After dropping their bags at the apartment on Wednesday, Ms. Reynolds and her husband went out while her mother-in-law stayed with the children.
When Ms. Reynolds and her husband returned to the building, she said, the same man refused to let them in, telling them it was illegal for them to rent an apartment for just a few nights. (Many New Yorkers illegally rent out their apartments on Airbnb, though it is not clear whether this particular rental was legal.)
She and her husband waited more than an hour before the man finally relented and let them into the apartment where their children were waiting. She said they called the police multiple times, but officers never came.
Full article and video at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/nyregion/black-man-white-neighbor-lobby-ny.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
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