A Minneapolis venture capitalist had his office lease terminated after a viral video showed him asking a group of black entrepreneurs if they were tenants of the building and were allowed to use its gym.
The video shows Tom Austin, a white man, threatening to call 911 after the group of black men he confronted refused to tell him what office they worked in.
The men Austin approached while working out in the building’s gym were entrepreneurs of Top Figure, a Minneapolis-based social media and branding agency. The company is a member of the WeWork co-working space in the building.
Top Figure posted the video on its Instagram account Wednesday, calling it an incident of “racial profiling.”
“Normally we don’t speak out about encounters of racial profiling and age discrimination that we face day to day in our lives as young black entrepreneurs,” the post said. “We’ve been in this office space and have rented and grown our business for the past 1 year and half here. As we were working out this man approached and immediately asked us who we were and if ‘WE BELONG’ in this building. Granted in order to enter the building you NEED a key card to enter EVERY part of the building which EACH of our team members individually have. We all pay rent here and this man demanded that we show him our key cards or he will call the cops on us. We are sick and tired of tolerating this type of behavior on a day to day basis and we feel that we had to bring light onto this situation.”
Austin said an in email to the Minneapolis Star Tribune he regretted his actions.
“Should have handled it differently,” Austin said. “Not my job to have done anything.”
The confrontation comes at a time when Minneapolis has experienced high racial tensions after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died at the hands of a white police officer earlier this week. The city has experienced an uproar of violent demonstrations and unrest in the wake of his death.
