Is the shared economy racist?

This is so depressing and even though sample size is small it rings 100% true. I think it&#x27;s just a symptom of an inherently racist and unfair world and is not Uber or Airbnb&#x27;s fault. The same thing happens with names at the resume level and on and on.<p>That said I think there&#x27;s a new market here. If the average Airbnb listing is rejecting applicants of color maybe there could be a special &quot;diversity friendly&quot; designation on Airbnb or other sites. Perhaps users could add some flair, something similar to the LGBT pride flag that some business add to their windows, to their profiles to signify they sincerely welcome all applicants. Hopefully this doesn&#x27;t sound too ignorant.<p>If mass rejection of specific groups is occurring, there&#x27;s some money to be made here by sending out the right signals. Just think of the profit made by some gay&#x2F;lesbian bars in the 1970s and 80s.

There&#x27;s a really simple explanatory mechanism, which is that even if an AirBnB host is bound by the same anti-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act as a Hyatt, which is probably true, holding individual service providers accountable at that level is basically impossible. And to the extent that the &quot;sharing economy&quot; involves more individuals rather than businesses that can be sued, you will see more discrimination.<p>This issue also strikes to the heart of some of the libertarian ethos around the sharing economy generally and Uber&#x2F;AirBnB in particular. People are really racist.[1] Just getting the racism to the levels experienced by Andrew&#x27;s friend experienced involved a century of the federal government beating the states over the head with troops, court orders, etc. The elimination of overt racial discrimination in private businesses is actually a wonderful example of concerted government action addressing a problem that according to free market theories shouldn&#x27;t even have existed in the first place.<p>[1] I think Americans are much less racist than almost anyone else. I&#x27;m Bengali by ethnicity, and my observation is that people on the subcontinent are racist enough to make a south Georgia redneck blush. But even then sometimes I look around at maps like this: <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Racial_Divide_Detroit_MI.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;f&#x2F;f1&#x2F;Racial_Di...</a> (race map of Detroit with black areas in blue and white areas in red), and think we&#x27;d still have legal segregation if the courts hadn&#x27;t forced it down peoples&#x27; throats.

Very interesting however they could have easily provided some more conclusive proof. The author should have tried booking one of the places that turned Brandon down on the same dates. If he had been offered the place it would haave been more clear racism was in play. I&#x27;m not denying racism was in play (although the UberX example seems quite silly - personally I&#x27;d be happy to get a driver that didn&#x27;t talk to me and the one time I&#x27;ve used Uber the driver wasn&#x27;t very talkative) but I&#x27;d like to see the author try my suggestion and follow up the post.

This reminds me of a sad old joke.<p>In the south, whites don&#x27;t mind if blacks are around, so long as they aren&#x27;t uppity. In the north, whites don&#x27;t mind if blacks are uppity, as long as they&#x27;re not around.<p>Having spent time among both southern rednecks and northern intellectuals, it rings painfully true.

I don&#x27;t think any of this is specific to AirBnb or Uber. What is described here is just plain racism, something that&#x27;s blatant all over America (some might say, it&#x27;s what <i>defines</i> America), especially in regards towards black people. The black friend in the story knew this and wasn&#x27;t surprised. It&#x27;s only surprising to people who think this is something of the past, as if somehow people have improved and this shouldn&#x27;t exist. The idea that people as a whole change, improve, and become less racist, while romantically appealing, couldn&#x27;t be further from the truth.

I&#x27;m not saying the shared economy is racist by design. Nor am I accusing mentioned companies as being racist. But as companies build trust through profiles and links to social networks, they should be wary of the unintended consequence.

This isn&#x27;t limited to white hosts either. My brother stayed with a black couple during an internship in DC last summer (he&#x27;s white).<p>They told him that after several bad experiences they no longer host black guests.

What we are seeing here brings to light an inconvenient truth: you simply cannot legislate away obnoxious social behavior. As long as I remember, Craigslist has prohibited discriminatory <i>advertising</i> to ensure listings comply with the fair housing act. Does this really stop a prejudiced landlord? When it gets down to the level of individuals dealing consensually with individuals, there isn&#x27;t much that the state can do (unless it&#x27;s a tyrannical state).<p>Black comedians have <i>always</i> joked about being passed over by cabs, well before Uber, Lyft etc. In the long run, I think these services actually <i>improve</i> things .. On the curb, all a racist cab driver sees is how someone looks .. but now everyone can develop a reputation that goes well beyond appearances. In addition, by taking care of payment, prejudiced drivers don&#x27;t have to worry that some groups are less likely to pay at the end of the ride. Eventually, they will realize that the color of one&#x27;s skin is a terrible predictor of character and (hopefully) become less racist.<p>So, the &quot;sharing economy&quot; is not itself racist, but due to its peer to peer nature it <i>exposes</i> the lingering prejudices in our Society. But, since prejudice requires a lack of reason or evidence, the sharing economy also provides a <i>way forward</i>. Through AirBnB, for example, we can not only see what someone looks like, but we get information about the <i>content of their character</i>. Granted, it&#x27;s not perfect (nothing ever will be), but it&#x27;s a <i>start.</i>

This is pretty clearly an example of individual people being racist, not companies. Traditional taxi drivers are notoriously racist, I&#x27;m not surprised their app-summoned alternatives are any different.

I can say I&#x27;ve had similar experiences all across California with AirBnB.

From my experience YES!<p>Before I start, I&#x27;d like to note that I am a young white, non-handicapped male.<p>Most of my participation in the shared economy comes from hitchhiking, and I&#x27;ve done a lot of it. Only once has a car stopped that had a black passenger in it. I don&#x27;t think that black people are racist towards white hitchhikers, but I think there is a deep barrier of trust at issue. Black people <i>do</i> experience racism at so many levels of society, that when it comes to shearing excess resource with some white opportunists.. HELL NO!, I wouldn&#x27;t do it.<p>I&#x27;m not saying that black drivers are racist towards white hitchhikers. I&#x27;m trying to demonstrate that there is a huge racial gap in our societal battery. White people are privilege enough to be able to trust a fellow citizen. Normally, experience tells black people not to.<p>ps. The same can be said about women, handicapped, and the homeless. But definitely the case of black discrimination is one of the most severe there.<p>pps. The pattern I described seems to brake with anarchist and charity groups. I&#x27;ve done food-not-bombs, homes-not-jails, occupy, and there blacks, whites, women, etc. participate together in a shared ecosystem. I wonder why?

These are businesses built to operate outside established regulations and inevitablely have features of grey and black markets. In some ways this is like complaining about racism among chop shops or the guy selling electronics that fell off the back of a truck. The lack of full accountability is what makes it possible to provide a deal.

This would have been far more convincing if he tried to book the same dates as his friend and was accepted after they said they didn&#x27;t have anything available on that date. As it is, it&#x27;s just one of many possible reasons his friend had trouble finding a reservation.

This strikes me as naturally similar to many human marketplaces, such as craigslist roommates, hiring practices, where to go grab a drink -- which have long been reflective of similar biases. In my anecdotal experience, the scales on airbnb&#x2F;couchsurf&#x2F;craigslist roommates&#x2F;similar are even further tipped in a sexist? manner, dramatically favoring females.<p>There is little surprising or special about the sharing economy resonating these patterns. However, It does provide an excellent venue for study and potentially creative mitigation.

I can believe racism was a factor.<p>However, there&#x27;s also a bias against <i>new</i> guests (with no history).<p>And, there seems to have been a big increase in the percentage of marginal listings that are not-really-available. (Perhaps, far more people are casually listing places without real intent to rent or diligence in checking requests and updating calendar availability. Or perhaps with higher usage, those are the only kinds of listings that are left in the last few days.)<p>My experience: the first few times I used AirBnb, even as a last-minute booking, availability was accurate, most hosts got back to me right away, booking was quick and easy.<p>The last few times I&#x27;ve used AirBnb, in New York, Berlin, and Portland, I&#x27;ve had a positive feedback history and there are more listings showing as available than ever. <i>But,</i> many hosts take over a day to respond if at all, and often then tell me the spot isn&#x27;t available. I&#x27;ve had to send ~10+ inquiries, instead of ~2, to achieve one booking. So a few &#x27;sorrys&#x27; in a row, on a booking a few days in advance, doesn&#x27;t seem <i>that</i> suspicious.<p>Because the host gets to perform a &#x27;social&#x2F;internet x-ray&#x27; on a prospective guest, you always wonder if the real reason for the &#x27;sorry&#x27; is that you&#x27;re just not to their liking: by race, gender, age, coolness, politics, career, whatever. You never know for sure. That&#x27;s both a strength and weakness of the AirBnb system: people can meet and host others they&#x27;re most comfortable or interested in... or express longstanding and unfair prejudicies.

If anything, shouldn&#x27;t apps that involve ratings and profiles reduce racism, because they allow you to judge the person by their behavior as opposed to just their appearance? Compare Lyft to taxis, for example.<p>In the case of taxis the driver only sees appearance-based characteristics when they choose whether to pick someone up. In the case of Lyft the user has a long history of ratings which indicate whether they&#x27;re a good person to drive around.

Doesn&#x27;t the digital sharing economy actually make bigotry incredibly easy to detect and verify?<p>All you have to do is try booking the same place on a different dates (assuming you have an account in good standing&#x2F;positive reviews&#x2F;etc). If they keep rejecting you, then not only are you sure you have a bigot on your hand, you have a paper trail with enough proof to go after them with a lawyer.<p>This is something that isn&#x27;t even possible in other environments (like say, cabs that just conveniently don&#x27;t see you standing there hailing them). If anything, the digital sharing economy can be a huge help to fighting bigotry.

I&#x27;m not sure how these services operate, but I wonder if a difference to traditional hotels is that they get applications, rather than reservations on a first come, first served basis?<p>If AirBnB landlords receive applications, maybe they just wait for an attractive one (ie a single male landlord could prefer to rent to attractive women).<p>I&#x27;m not trying to defend racism, just wondering how to alleviate the problem. I suppose traditional hotels don&#x27;t get to look at a profile of the people who book with them. At most they could infer something from their name.

Black Utopia Fantasy Story: <a href="http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4900" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sinfest.net&#x2F;archive_page.php?comicID=4900</a>

I think the headline is a bit misleading.<p>Racist would mean that hosts don&#x27;t want to rent their apartment to people of <i>other</i> races (ie whites only wanting to rent to other whites). Here it seems that hosts are making a judgement call about the renter and using race as a parameter. They appear to have no problem renting to Asians or Indians, just have an issue with one particular ethnicity.<p>Wouldn&#x27;t a more accurate headline be - &#x27;Airbnb hosts don&#x27;t want to rent to black customers&#x27; (even if it&#x27;s highly anecdotal)?

White supremacy is an oppressive institution that reaches throughout all of society. Unless it is actively fought against, it will prevail.

i&#x27;ve never used abnb, how would the host know that brandon was black? do renters have avatars&#x2F;profile pics?

So unfortunate, and also a reflection of the wider national context. Maybe time to add a few more to this list of &quot;21 Things Black People Can&#x27;t Do in America&quot;:<p><a href="http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/21-things-you-cant-do-while-black" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.motherjones.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;21-things-you-cant...</a>

This is sickening, but more so because it shows you that African Americans still receive downright discrimination in the United States. If anything, these sharing apps reveal that crowd managed sharing apps cast spotlight on the problem.<p>To combat this, they would need to enforce a strict rule that highlights that you cannot refuse someone based on their color, gender, orientation. Of course this only works in an ideal world.

This is so depressing to make AirBnb or Uber responsible for the image of Black people that the Black people worked so long and hard to achieve and maintain.

So what? Asians and whites are discriminated by government agencies, universities and large corporations. Last time HR manager screamed at me because I insisted my race is &#x27;slavic&#x27; not &#x27;white&#x27;.