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Airbnb Unveils Changes To Address Racial Discrimination (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Acknowledging that his company has "been slow on this issue," Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky is rolling out changes aimed at addressing discrimination complaints against the home rental service. Among the changes: de-emphasizing the role of user photos in arranging stays. Here are some of the other changes Airbnb announced Thursday: Providing assistance to people who feel they've experienced discrimination; Anti-bias training for all staff; Setting public diversity goals for staff; Partnering with historically black colleges and universities to strengthen their recruitment pipeline. The move comes after longstanding complaints from African-American Airbnb customers who said their booking requests were turned down at a high rate. Black Airbnb users vented their frustration with the phenomenon of being rejected for a booking date -- only to see the same place get listed once again -- spawning the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack on Twitter. And those frustrations were borne out in a study that sent 6,400 requests to AirBnb hosts in five large U.S. cities; the requests were identical except for the customer's name. As the Hidden Brain podcast reported, "requests with African-American sounding names were roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted than their white-sounding counterparts."
Whatever policies the company staff are subjected to, unless the renters are somehow compelled to rent to people against their will — however misguided, hateful, or bigoted that will might be — the complaints will not go away.
The government may compel a business-owner by threatening fines and withdrawal of license. Fortunately, AirBnB does not have the government's power and monopoly. Whatever they do is doomed to failure.
They know this and are going through the motions only to deflect criticism (and the government's wrath) against themselves.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
First off, I would never rent my house for a week or two. I just don't trust people that much.
Second, if I was going to rent my house out for a week or two I would look at age first. That 50 year old black couple is going to beat the 20 year old single white dude. Every. Single. Time.
Uhh no. Humans live, learn, grow, and develop based on personal experience. Your incredible arrogance in dismissing the experience of others is disgusting. Black cops do not fear other Blacks more because of inaccurate stereotypes.
They fear them because of the very real and demonstrably accurate statistical fact of black violence. Blacks kill other Blacks at astronomically high levels. Cops would be suicidal to pretend otherwise.
If you really want to have fun, err... I mean take this to the next logical level, then forbid owners from running criminal background checks on the renters. After all, not wanting to rent your expensive home to criminals is racist, since a black person if far more likely to have a criminal record than a white person. Airbnb should make renters agree to rent to any criminal that applies.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.