A Black Google employee said he was 'escorted' off the campus by security because they didn't 'believe' he worked there, report says

• A Black Google product manager said he was stopped by security and his job in a viral tweet last week.
• The employee said, "somebody called security on me because they didn't believe I was an employee."
• A Google spokesperson told Forbes that they take the worker's "concerns very seriously."

A Black Google employee said he was stopped by security at his job after someone reported him.

Angel Onuoha, who is an associate product manager at the company and a recent Harvard University graduate tweeted that he was stopped by security staff who didn't believe he worked for the company, Forbes reported.

"Riding my bike around Google's campus and somebody called security on me because they didn't believe I was an employee," Onuoha said in the viral tweet posted on September 20. "Had to get escorted by two security guards to verify my ID badge."

Two days later, Onuoha tweeted that security "ended up taking my ID badge away from me later that day, and I was told to call security if I had a problem with it."

"And that was after holding me up for 30 minutes, causing me to miss my bus ride home," he added.

According to Onuoha's LinkedIn profile, he works at Google's Mountain View, California office.

Angel did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. However, a Google spokesperson told Insider in a statement that the company "take this employee's concerns very seriously" and contacted him about the incident.

"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 statement continued: "More broadly, one step we've taken recently to decrease badging incidents is to make clear that employees should leave investigating these kinds of access concerns to our security team. Our goal is to ensure that every employee experiences Google as an inclusive workplace and that we create a stronger sense of belonging for all employees."

Last year, during the height of anti-racism demonstrations across the country, Black employees at Google said they were unhappy with the company's response to the protests, as Insider previously reported. And in 2019, a former employee said they "never stopped feeling the burden of being black at Google" in a memo that included three ways the company could better its diversity and inclusion efforts.

According to a report from Gallup released in 2020, one in four Black workers said they faced discrimination at their job in the past year. Since the pandemic, many workers of color have expressed preferring to work from home over dealing with in-person microaggressions in the office.