Chika Okafor, a 29-year-old social media producer for Bleacher Report, uploaded a video of an aggressive white man racially profiling him and a friend at his New York City apartment earlier in December. While the white man in the video has not yet been officially identified, he has since been deemed ‘Hallway Harry’ on social media.
According to Okafor — who uploaded the shocking video to Facebook on Thursday, December 20 — the video was recorded at his four-story walk-up on First Avenue near East 74th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of New York City. Okafor said he’s been living in that building for a year now.
Speaking to the New York Times, Okafor said as he and his friend Cassius Flemming were waiting for their Lyft in the building lobby, “Hallway Harry” approached the two men and aggressively asked “‘Who the f— are these guys?”.
“Hallway Harry” went on to accuse Okafor of not living in the building, saying “You don’t live here… I’ve never seen you before, I’ve been here 27 years.”
Furthermore, at one point in the video, “Hallway Harry” insists that he acts this way towards everyone, saying “I do it [question people about where they live] to white people, too.”
via Facebook:
“I was racially profiled in my apartment complex last night. While I was with my friend Cassius Flemming waiting for a Lyft ride on the first floor of the building that I have lived in since mid-December of last year, this man interrogated me about where I live. As you can see, he thought that he was entitled to know who I was and where I lived simply because, according to him, he lived there for 27 years. The arrogance is appalling but honestly, not surprising because far too many times people of color have been victims of this kind of behavior.”
https://www.facebook.com/chika.okafor.773/videos/10156858088158808/
Building manager Cathy Burton did not respond to the New York Times’ request for comment. Additionally, while Okafor says he does not plan to press charges, he expressed that he thinks “Hallway Harry” should be evicted.
This “Hallway Harry” incident is just the latest in a string of racial profiling or racist incidents that have sprung up all over the country in recent years.
Tabitha Duncan, a waitress in Missouri, was fired after she was recorded on camera using the n-word. Lori McAllen, a Department of Transportation in Oregon, also lost her job due to a racially charged Facebook post. Similarly, Harley Barber, a former student at the University of Alabama, was expelled after uploading a video of her saying the n-word to social media.
Theresa Lund, the director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, was forced to publicly apologized after she was filmed asked a woman if she lived in “one of the affordable units.” North Carolina man Adam Bloom was filmed racial profiling an African American woman and her son at a community pool. Brooklyn woman Teresa Klein was dubbed “Cornerstore Caroline” for calling the police on a young black child for “touching her butt.” Sierra Dawn Measelle, a former dancer in Portland, Oregon, also went viral for her racist outburst in September 2018.
