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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."
18% of the population commits 40% of the crime. Of course no one wants that in their home and they're not to blame. It's not racism it's fact.
Decide you wanna protect your own property and suddenly you're racist
Come on, can't we get some happy, nerdy news on Slashdot anymore? I don't give one single fuck about this article. Or almost any other article on Slashdot today. And yesterday was basically an Apple circle-jerk. Please, for the love of gOD, give me some ultra-nerdy stuff that makes me doubt my ability to do the math. This site can genuinely challenge you but, not when you constantly post bullshit.
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.
the company is telling its employees what policies to implement, instructing their employees on how to behave, and overall exercising control over its employees. Just like a hotel does.
Except that training staff and setting diversity goals for recruitment is not going to do anything when it is the *hosts* that are discriminating. In most cases, if the host also lives there, it is not even illegal to discriminate. Most places have rules that let you discriminate on gender and other random requirements when dealing with roommates or in some cases even sharing a close dwelling like a duplex.
I am willing to bet most won't rent to a group of teenagers, and it isn't because of ageism.
I don't think they will have any luck with cajoling people into abandoning basic risk management when it comes to renting their property.
Amazing that a population associated with 2500% more murders per capita has a 16% less acceptance rate.
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.
Young men are charged more for car insurance because they are a higher risk. When there was a free market in healthcare women were charged more because they use it more. Smokers were charged more as well.
If they really wanted to show that discrimination was unfounded they would post the data proving that African American Airbnb users are no more likely to commit crime or cause damage than other renters.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
This will spur demand for a racist-friendly rental site, they could call it Aryanbnb. This would also help nonwhite renters avoid discrimination by simply avoiding the site!
But seriously, this shit's not gonna stop as long as loopholes exist for short-term online rentals that don't for traditional rentals. See also: Illegal interview questions vs. employer facebook stalking.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If the renter can supply a good credit rating it should be safe.
Nobody runs a credit check for a one or two night AirBNB stay. Even if they did, that is not a fix to discrimination, since blacks, on average, have worse credit scores.
Because blacks tend to have worse credit scores, in 2007 the state of Washington banned the use of credit reports in hiring. This of course, made discrimination worse. This is an example of a market for lemons. Since employers could no longer tell "good" black candidates from "bad" black candidates, they played it safe by just hiring fewer blacks overall. Yet another perverse unintended consequence of a regulation.
Lets see the stats on homes being trashed, by race.
I host on Airbnb, and the biggest problem is not being "trashed", but getting unjustified bad reviews the destroy your reputation and diminish future bookings. I have rented to black people, and they tend to be easy going and tolerant of minor problems that may crop up. I have never had a bad review from any of them. The worse renters are French people. They whine about everything.
...give them a black sounding name.
Just don't do it. Give them a chance to at least make it to the interview on their qualifications and merits. At least in person a better first impression can be made beyond "Oh, I see you're extremely black."
Come back next week for: "How to tell a parent doesn't give a damn." (spoiler- It's the same lesson), and "How to make yourself look un-black if you're black." and "Cars you really should avoid if you don't want to be pulled over (with any color)."
Sign up for my 5 week seminar and you'll could win a fake pair of glasses and my professionals guide on buying small Japanese cars.
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.
If the renter can supply a good credit rating it should be safe.
Nobody runs a credit check for a one or two night AirBNB stay. Even if they did, that is not a fix to discrimination, since blacks, on average, have worse credit scores.
Also consider that a lot of people using AirBNB will be foreigners to that nation, so no credit check will be possible as different nations use different systems (not to mention privacy laws).
Besides, with AirBNB the payment is taken before you arrive.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I favor the libertarian model. Just to be clear, I'm not a Libertarian but I like many points of their philosophy.
Many people are surprised by this because as a black man, they don't expect that I'd argue in favor of someone's right to discriminate but yes. If you want to discriminate, it should be legal BUT you have to face the consequences of that decision.
I suspect that the vast majority of the people I know, of all racial backgrounds, would refuse to do business with someone who mistreated me just as I would refuse to do business with someone who had mistreated them.
Being that this is AirBNB, a private entity, I like it. If you're going to discriminate, they will not do business with you.
The power of the Free Market at works.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
After all, if black people want to only rent to black people that'll be OK as long as we call it a safe space. I suspect that other protected classes could get away with this too. As long as it's not ever a white male because then it would be bad. Logic is definitely a weak point among the PC crowd. It's either wrong to discriminate or it isn't. Anything along the lines of you can do this but he can't are just a new flavor of discrimination.
That's effectively what "Ban the Box" legislation is doing. Since it's getting increasingly unacceptable to ask about and disqualify candidates who have criminal records up front, and since black Americans are statistically more likely to have a criminal record, employers have responded by hiring fewer blacks at all.
The next step is a quota system.
Since it's getting increasingly unacceptable to ask about and disqualify candidates who have criminal records ...
One reason is that having a criminal record is not correlated with poor performance for most jobs. It may be sensible to run a criminal background check if you are hiring a cashier, but not if you are hiring a carpenter or a programmer.
16% are racist is another way of saying 84% aren't. Compare to attitudes 50 years I'd take that as a win.
To compare, 22% would've still voted for Bush even after starting 2 unwinnable wars that cost over a Trillion dollars and will take decades to resolve, and plunging most of the western world into economic meltdown. If even the most useless leader in history still has 22% support, then 16% is nothing.
I live in France, I am not sure if it counts as whining. I think they just have a different attitude - I don't think they ever gush with praise.
Some guy I (an anonymous coward) met said their education system works as follows. All kids start the year with 20/20 full marks. But for each bit of work they do that is less than perfect they lose credit. And everyone always loses credit. In say the UK, it wouldn't be too hard to get around 90% for most things, but I think anything over 80% in France is really pretty exceptional. I took some courses with clever hard working people and the top score in the class might only be 15/20 or 16/20.
I saw some of a patisserie competition where people were making ridiculously beautiful delicious looking things that in the UK would only receive gushing praise and scores of 8.5/10 or more, but in France the praise was very much tempered with criticism and scores were closer to 6/10.
A friend of mine has a French wife and he thinks that the French in general have a very fatalistic attitude towards things, don't generally expecct things to go well etc.
In general I would give a 5 star review on airbnb and consider it being polite, unless there was a problem, similarly with amazon. But I think really a 3 star review means everything was fine right? 5 stars should be for exceptional? Or at least I think that is how the French might see it.
I don't know what the point I am trying to make is - definitely don't take it personally, it is probably a cultural difference which airbnb and any other future renters (frustratingly) won't really be able to take into account.
Not as closely as it should be....
3* for everything good and expected sounds reasonable. Unfortunately the star ratings have become something like this:
5* Everything worked as expected. Clean, owner was there on time etc.
4* Kind of skeezy but whatever there were less than 3 rats visible at any one time.
3* The bed was on fire.
2* Turns out the apartment was floating above hell itself. Would not rent again.
1* WiFi was slow and unreliable.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's kind of obvious.
If you have an ad-hoc unprofessional arrangement things like this are going to happen.
It's one thing letting strangers into your workplace.
It's a very different thing letting strangers into your home, and unless you are very prepared for it like those of old who used to rent out rooms then an emotional shitstorm is likely to happen when somebody treats your place like a cheap motel.
The business model of it being like online motel bookings contributes to this.
And this is why it's ok to be racist against white people but not ok to be racist against black people?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The next logical step is that I'm not allowed to reject applicants that don't have the necessary college degrees because there's fewer (insert minority group here) degree holders.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You never had to deal with Germans or Austrians, I guess? :)
They tend to use the full spectrum of the evaluation system, with 3 actually meaning "ok". 4 stars would mean that the service was exceptional and for 5 stars you'd pretty much have to provide something that they didn't even imagine possible.
It's going to take a while to teach them that 5 stars is actually supposed to mean that there was no problem. Because ... how are you supposed to show that it was really awesome? Or is it not planned to be any better than "ok"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Since it's getting increasingly unacceptable to ask about and disqualify candidates who have criminal records ...
One reason is that having a criminal record is not correlated with poor performance for most jobs. It may be sensible to run a criminal background check if you are hiring a cashier, but not if you are hiring a carpenter or a programmer.
I would say that depends. I would not want to hire a carpenter that has a history of robbing the houses they are working on or a programmer who has a history of putting exploits into his code in order to later hack companies he's work for. But I probably wouldn't care if my programmer got busted for possession of marijuana or something like that.
Rushton is a racist - this is both well known and extensively documented by comments he's made publicly and white supremacy publications he's contributed to. His science is beyond junk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The man has been repeatedly and thoroughly discredited scientifically as ignoring evidence that doesn't fit his prejudices, his testing methods as biased against black people, and using non-equivalent groups.
He was president of an institute classified as a hate group. He speaks routinely at eugenics conferences and has published articles in white supremacy magazines and online websites.
Please help metamoderate.
the question isn't if you'd be unwilling to hire a programmer with a criminal history, it's if whether or not you'd hire that programmer with a criminal history over a programmer without one right?
Racism is prejudice. Power only dictates what impact that prejudice has. And power is rarely universal and uniform. If you have a racist black boss as a white guy, you can be "privileged white" all you want, you still suffer from racism.
Your statement implies that "all white people have power". Implied is further that no black people have power. And neither statement is universally true.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, that's only if the employee is a chick....
If it is a guy, then you are expected to be at work 24/7, and make up for when the ladies have to be off to take care of the kids.
Ok...that may be a bit harsh, they do get off occasionally....
And God forbid if you are a SINGLE, unmarried no-child male. You're at the bottom of the barrel and don't get any of the time off perks the married/children folks do....you're expected to cover for each and every one of them when they have time off for "family" stuff.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I should have been more clear. That's the "Official SJW" definition of Racism and why they feel as though minorities can get away with whatever racist or bigoted shit they want.
The left, in general, seems to think they can win the culture war by simply redefining their way through the English language until the definitions favor them exclusively. My favorite is "White Supremacy", which to most folks means Neo-Nazis, the KKK, or anyone else who advocates for white people being superior in various ways. Not so, the regressive left! A White Supremacist, in SJW parlance, is any member of the majority White population who isn't an SJW. That is, anyone who isn't helping "fix" the problem is a White Supremacist. The beauty comes from the fact that they've redefined a word with an almost exclusively negative connotation, made it somewhat neutral (i.e, being a white supremacist doesn't necessarily mean you want to kill all minorities, just that you're a bigoted racist who hates minorities), and then casually call anyone they disagree with "White Supremacist", knowing full well that they're using a fairly serious insult but also that they can fall back and hide behind their bullshit definition when called on it.
because there's fewer (insert minority group here) degree holders
Unfortunately, in college degrees, it is white males who are the minority, so it is perfectly socially acceptable to disclude them from things.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
it's if whether or not you'd hire that programmer with a criminal history over a programmer without one right?
No, because you are never going to have two identical candidates that only differ in that one aspect. There are always going to be a number of pluses and minuses for each candidate. The data indicates that having a criminal record makes very little difference in job performance, so it would make sense for most employers to avoid the time and hassle of running background checks and instead focus on other issues.
My company stopped running background checks years ago when we kept losing good candidates because of the delay in running the checks. By the time we were ready to make an offer, the candidate had already accepted a job elsewhere. The best candidates are always going to get multiple offers. With our new policy, if a candidate does well in their interview, we make a job offer before they leave the building. Many accept the offer on the spot. Our hiring rate, employee quality, and employee retention have all gone up.