African-American Google employee mistakenly escorted off premises
Angel Onuoha was innocently riding his bicycle around the Mountain View, California, Google office where he worked as an associate product manager.
He was shocked and confused when he was stopped by security and asked to provide proof of identification, after being reported by someone who thought he was trespassing on company grounds.
“Riding my bike around Google’s campus and somebody called security on me because they didn’t believe I was an employee,” his recently shared viral tweet read.
“Had to get escorted by two security guards to verify my ID badge.”
Angel’s ID badge was taken off him, as he was instructed to take up the matter with the campus security.
“And that was after holding me up for 30 minutes causing me to miss my bus ride home,” he wrote.
Almost 2,000 people responded to his original tweet as they expressed outrage at how such an incident, largely presumed to be racially motivated, had played out in 2021.
One response was from a black man who said he previously worked in security at another Google campus.
“Dawg I worked as security at Google and got security called on me,” he wrote.
Angel was inundated with messages from individuals who had faced similar acts of discrimination in the workplace.
A spokesperson for Google told Forbes the company was taking Mr Onuoha’s “concerns very seriously”.
“We take this employee’s concerns very seriously, are in touch with him and are looking into this. We learned that the employee was having issues with his badge due to an administrative error and contacted the reception team for help,” the spokesperson said.
“After they were unable to resolve the issue, the security team was called to look into and help resolve the issue.”
The incident comes after Google’s public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, as they vowed to double its black workforce by 2025.
Since its pledge however, black employees have increased by just one per cent, while white employees have declined 1.3 per cent.
Image credit: Twitter @angelonuha7 / Shutterstock