I just saw this too.
In the economy of the future, we will all get rich selling each other hand-crafted soap, except the ones who have no recourse when they encounter discrimination.
Similar results have been shown from submitting job applications with different names.
Funny enough, there are other YC ventures that deliberately obfuscate applicant names and replace them with random phrases like âPeppermint Bathtub.â So itâs not like AirBnB lacks for ideas on how to mitigate this.
[quote=âRatel, post:4, topic:70586â]
Similar results have been shown from submitting job applications with different
[/quote]Thatâs why we have have laws regulating housing discrimination. But Airbnb bypasses those regulations, and a whole host of other regulations. Thatâs the entire point of them.
I, for one, would never let someone like Peppermint Bathtub into my home.
So the news is : âAirBnB hosts are consistently representative of the population at largeâ
In nearly all cases, whether renting or buying, minorities were told about and shown fewer properties than white people. Blacks were told about and shown about 17 percent fewer homes than whites
I suppose youâre pointing out that whatâs being pointed out â the pervasive persistence of racism â is already obvious. Trouble is, Airbnb is likely another facet of daily life that most white people would never think of as racist. I think it just wouldnât occur to them. So doing studies like this one and getting their results reported remain important. Itâs already pushed Airbnb to at least respond and pledge to do better. Maybe such studies can also help with the push for better regulation of Airbnbâs practices, so that it has to do better.
Itâs too bad that this study was not shared with Chief Justice John Roberts and Antonin Scalia in their hearings about the effectiveness of Affirmative Action. Itâs pretty creepy to hear John Roberts very anti-stance on the Equal Voting Rights Act and then hear him proclaim âwhat do black students contribute to a physics class?â Why are so many white people comfortable with racism?
Self-improvement is masturbation.
Unfortunately itâs difficult to enforce those regulations even for housing discrimination as long as thereâs plausible deniability. People may even fool themselves into thinking they turned away a loan application from someone with a name like âTyrone Williamsâ in lieu of âConnor Andersonâ based of their respective merits rather than a conscious or unconscious racial bias.
I think itâs mostly because so many of them believe that their racist feelings, thoughts and actions are instead just commonsense.
you know, i hate it when you are right. (i could tell stories, but itâs mostly white racism with hispanic people, because of where iâve lived. and yeah, it is always fucking âcommon senseâ)
edit
i have a bad habit, i have good hearing so i tend to overhear peoples phone calls. when i heard someone in my apartment complex say on the phone, âyeah, we need to do something, to protect us good⌠(big pause) white peopleâ i almost lost my shit. she didnât want to be overheard, but yeah, âkick out everyone in the country that isnât white, cause they arenât good and whiteââor just let them grow our food.
Since itâs Friday afternoon (at least where I am), can we just segue a bit and start telling white people jokes?
Oops, almost forgot â #notallwhitepeople!
As just one example I lost track of all the âA blanket ban on all Muslims isnât anti-Muslim!â claims Iâve seen this week.
I think a lot of people live under the delusion âIâm not being racist if I donât self-identify as a racist, and in fact anyone who points out systemic racism is being the real racist.â
hay!! i like cheese! in fact, Iâm eating some right now!
My point wasnât that racism is obvious or normalised. Being reminded of that, and looking for ways to continue to address that is an ongoing task.
My point is that this headline portraying AirBnB hosts specifically as racists is false-y, when the results of this study actually put them right in the middle of stats gathered from other, wider studies.
âAndriod users found to be no more or less racist than non-android usersâ
âCilantro lovers are about as passively racist as everyone elseâ
All you can take away from it is that AirBnB hosts are not magically any more virtuous human beings than others
- as if anyone had expected a tendency for people who share their homes with foreign travellers to be more tolerant overall or something. ⌠which, Iâll admit, I was slightly hoping to see.
Yes, racism is supposedly something blatant that âactual racistsâ do, not ordinary white people. Never mind the fact â oops, the systemic fact! â that we live in a society that encourages all people to have and enact unconscious racist biases. What a surreal twist it is these days that those who point that out are accused of being the real racists, the ârace hustlers.â exploding head gif
Yeah. I suppose the headline could be more accurate if it said, âLike most other people, Airbnb hosts consistently discriminate against black people.â
By âitâ I assume youâve moved to referring to the whole post, and to the study itâs about? If so, then I think thereâs a lot more than that to be taken away from it/them, especially if you shift from thinking about what it says about who white people are and what they tend to do, to thinking about the shit that black people tend to experience. Racism like Airbnbâs is a pervasive problem, and itâs one that most white people donât want to acknowledge, let alone do anything about, especially if black people try to point it out. Institutionally validated studies like this one at least carry more weight with the few white folks who are willing to read past headlines.
