On Saturday afternoon, Keyon Harrold, a prominent jazz musician, and his 14-year-old son walked into the lobby of the Arlo, a boutique hotel in SoHo where they were staying, when they were accosted by a woman they had never seen before. The woman falsely accused the teenager of taking her cellphone and demanded that he give it back. Mr. Harrold, who is Black, captured parts of the altercation in a cellphone video, which was shared widely on social media this weekend as another example of false accusations against Black people. It drew comparisons to an incident in May when a white woman called 911 to falsely claim that a Black bird-watcher in Central Park was threatening her life. Mr. Harrold said in an interview on Sunday that the SoHo episode had left him “shellshocked.”He said he believed that he and his son, Keyon Harrold Jr., may have been racially profiled, though he said he did not know the race of the woman.

Source: New York Times December 28, 2020 00:33 UTC