New York City Airbnb host calls Black men ‘monkeys’ and ‘criminals’
Host kicks noted chef out of the rented apartment in the middle of the night
Chef Meshach Cisero tasted a bitter dish of racism and disrespect while staying at an Airbnb house in New York City over the weekend.
Chef Meshach Cisero tasted a bitter dish of racism and disrespect while staying at an Airbnb house in New York City over the weekend.
On a Twitter post, Cisero shared that he and four of his friends experienced racism by the host, only identified as Kate, and were subsequently kicked out of her Upper East Side apartment at 2:30 a.m. Kate questioned the number of people in the house and said there was only supposed to be four people, before Cisero reminded her that her post said two beds and a couch and the fifth person would be sleeping on the sofa.
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— Meshach Cisero (@mcisero24) June 1, 2019
Here are a select few of the most outrageous comments from the video.
“It says no party. This is a f*****g party,” Kate responded. “Which monkey is going to stay on the couch?”
“Monkey? Your mom,” one of the men replied back. Kate is then seen walking down the steps.
“Record and repost this as much as possible. Me and my friends just encountered a racist Airbnb host,” the chef said later on a Twitter post. “We entered Airbnb this evening, all coming in from different parts of the country to have a good time in New York City and our Airbnb host treated us very disrespectfully. She complained unnecessarily about our noise. She racially profiled us calling us criminals. She used racial slurs such as monkeys to describe us. She complained and said she felt threatened by our presence there.”
So far, Twitter posts on the incident have garnered more than 1.6 million views.
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Airbnb has issued a statement condemning the host’s racist language and states that she has been removed from their platform.
“The language used in this video is unacceptable and has no place in the Airbnb community,” spokesman Ben Breit told the Daily Mail. “We have a strict nondiscrimination policy, which we are enforcing to remove the host from our platform. We are supporting Mr. Cisero and his friends in getting them a new place to stay through our Open Doors policy. We’re thankful to them for bringing this to our attention so we could take action.”
Noirbnb, a site that promises to support Black people that travel with lodging and a variety of experiences, offered to help the chef find some place to stay.
Cisero is executive chef of The Cage Bird in Washington D.C.
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