AIRBNB have banned a host from their home-sharing platform, after she was filmed calling a group of black guests ‘monkeys’ in a video which has gone viral.
The incident took place on Saturday morning (Jun 1), hours after Airbnb guests Meshawn Cisero and his friends arrived at the host’s property in New York.
In the video clips shared by Ciero’s friend Kenneth Simpson, a woman identified as Kate can be seen confronting the men, asking them to leave and calling them criminals.
When the men protests and say she offered sleeping for four with a fifth on the couch, she responded saying: “Which monkey is gonna stay on the couch?”
The clips which where shared on Twitter have amassed thousands of retweets and likes as Simpson recalled what took place. He wrote: “We are a group of 4 educated and working professionals and were classified as criminals and animals over and over again. This was very traumatic for us, personally.
pic.twitter.com/PpxeWOaSPk [2]
— TooN (@Kartoon_1911) June 1, 2019 [3]
“She became so angry, rude, and disrespectful that we had to call @NYPD because we weren’t sure if she’d attack us while trying to leave.
“We eventually found a hotel, and had somewhere to crash for the night, but PLEASE share and repost this story/video. Our hope is that someone else doesn’t have to encounter a racist Airbnb hosts like Kate.”
Airbnb said in a tweet that they found the language to be “unacceptable” and has “no place in the Airbnb community.”
“We’ve removed the host from our platform and are supporting the guests with a new place to stay. We’re thankful to them for bringing this to our attention so we could take action,” they added.
In a further statement obtained by Fox News, Airbnb said: “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, and we're thankful to them for bringing this to our attention so that we could take action.”
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