Airbnb Unveils Changes To Address Racial Discrimination (npr.org) 314
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."
they also found... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: they also found... (Score:4, Interesting)
Weird. Almost as though it isn't racism causing this behavior, but knowledge and experience with a culture that is a higher risk to invite in your home. ... Nah! Let's just blame a boogeyman and commit corporate suicide as a sacrifice to white guilt.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And black police officers also show bias against black people while policing.
Being a member of an ethnicity doesn't mean you can't have inaccurate stereotypes about it.
Re: they also found... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: they also found... (Score:5, Insightful)
Black cops do not fear other Blacks more because of inaccurate stereotypes.
It depends on what you mean by "accurate." Are blacks more likely to be offenders than whites? That's what the stats say. But that doesn't exactly equate to a logical argument for "We should be suspicious of every black person we see."
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.
Hmm... "astronomically high levels"?? Yes, the black-on-black murder rate is much higher than the white-on-white murder rate. But, that doesn't imply that MOST black people are murderers, or even a significant number.
Roughly speaking, black murderers constitute around 0.03% of the black population. Meanwhile, white murderers constitute around 0.005% of the white population.
Here's the thing -- for ALL races, >99.9% of people are NOT murderers. Walking around acting like EVERY black person could potentially be a murderer is nonsensical. Making the assumption that every encounter with a black person will likely escalate to violence is unwarranted, based on your "demonstrably accurate statistical facts."
>95% of priests are NOT child molesters. >99% of Muslims are NOT terrorists. >99.9% of blacks are NOT murderers.
What you're talking about is irrational fear based on stereotypes. Just because the percentage of X crime is higher among population A than B doesn't mean it's reasonable to walk around assuming all of population A are likely criminals.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a classic case of correlation is not causation. Bring black isn't what pushes the percentages up, it's being poor that does. Poverty affects black people disproportionally, thus so does violence.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, being poor is also only a correlation. It's mostly about a specific culture. Compare the behaviour of on-lookers during WTC vs hurricane Catrina: in the former ordinary people (not just firefighters) did a lot to help victims, in the latter you had mass looting often to the point of killing victims.
An anti-intellectual anti-work culture makes people poor. A culture that glorifies aggressive violence (rather than just violence to defend yourself or your neighbours) will also have a lot of crime. In t
Re: (Score:3)
The differences in culture are not the cause of poverty, they are the result of it. A lifetime of poverty and discrimination tends not to create much empathy or respect for the rule of law, especially when things get desperate because the government doesn't seem to care and of course they couldn't afford any insurance.
You are confusing cause and effect. The common factor is poverty, and there are clear historical reasons for it that have nothing to do with culture, like being denied bank loans and good jobs
Re: (Score:3)
It is a classic case of correlation not being causation. Since poverty and crime are correlated, you're assuming poverty causes crime. In fact it's the other way around, that crime is a cause of poverty.
You need to solve the black crime problem, and the economic problems will take care of themselves.
Re: they also found... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you solve the "black crime problem"? And how exactly does crime cause poverty?
No one wants to establish businesses that bring jobs to areas that have high amounts of crime. Few want to work hard and amass wealth when it is likely to get stolen. When the blacks rioted in Milwaukee a couple of months back they looted the hair weave store. All that effort to establish a store to serve their community down the toilet.
Law and order comes first. Then comes the ability to create wealth. Not the other way around.
For every racial/ethnic/religious group that has achieved success in America, which came first: stable and predictable communities, or wealth?
As for fixing the problems that's got to come from the black community. White liberals do them no favors by making excuses for poor behavior. There are black voices trying to whip their communities into shape, but white liberals saying "no, no, you're victims, it's somebody else's fault!" is a far more appealing, but ultimately fruitless message. Counterproductive. I think it makes them feel good, though.
Prime example here. Blacks commit more crime, AirBnB renters notice and the solution isn't to weed out criminal blacks, or to offer support to efforts to end black crime, but to admonish the renters for noticing the crime. This doesn't do anything to solve the underlying problems. Black crime will continue, black poverty will continue, race relations will continue to deteriorate.
Re: they also found... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Roughly speaking, black murderers constitute around 0.03% of the black population. Meanwhile, white murderers constitute around 0.005% of the white population. (...) >99% of Muslims are NOT terrorists.
So say I'm a cop approaching a suspect's car, is a 0.03%/0.005% = 600% difference in risk of getting shot trivial or not? Or if I'm the security service, the ratio of Muslim to non-Muslim terrorists? Most rentals go well, but one horror story can easily wipe out the profit of a hundred ordinary rentals. It could happen with white people, it could happen with black people, it's unlikely to happen with white people and it's unlikely to happen with black people. But if the unlikely is still a lot more likely to happen with black people rather than white people, is that bigotry or risk management?
If I've been out partying and is walking home late at night and see a woman walking the same way I bet she's a lot more worried I'll jump her and rape her in the bushes than I am that she'll do the same to me. Because I'm male and she's female and most rapists are male and rape victims female. I'd say it's pretty daft to call that sexist, even though it's entirely based on our sex with no regards to the actual person and wouldn't happen if it were two men or two women. That 99%+ don't drag women into bushes to rape them doesn't mean that fear is false or misguided.
Of course a selective bias may become a self-fulfilling prophecy, if everyone looks to the more likely suspect they might also be disproportionally often investigated and caught compared to non-likely suspects leading to excessive confirmation of the bias. That is to say if the real numbers are 60/40 and the chance of getting caught is also 60/40 the actual figures will look like 0.6*0.6 = 36% vs 0.4*0.4 = 16% leading to the false conclusion that one group is more than twice as likely to be the perp rather than 50%. But in a world of limited knowledge and resources we tend to apply what we have, even though it's unfair to those who belong to a group but go against the statistics of that group.
Re: (Score:2)
In fact, you should just move to the ghetto. It's really cheap living, and according to you, 99.9% of the people there are going to be really swell. Go for it!
Now you're just trolling. Either that, or you're completely ignorant of statistics.
At no point did I say or even imply that 99.9% of the people in "the ghetto" are "going to be really swell." What I'm noting -- since you obviously completely missed the point -- is that police officers (and everyone else for that matter) need to take into account a LOT of context to conclude that someone likely is a threat. If you're in a violent neighborhood, obviously you're more likely to run into criminals. Duh.
T
Re: (Score:3)
How do crime rates in expensive black neighborhoods compare to crime rates in poor white neighborhoods?
Re: (Score:2)
So by this theory, white cops should fear whites because whites kill whites at similar "astronomically high levels" as blacks kill blacks. But of course that doesn't happen, because that is not what the fear is based on.
Re:they also found... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a member of an ethnicity doesn't mean you can't have inaccurate stereotypes about it.
Nonsense. Discrimination is wrong whether the stereotypes are accurate or not. Blacks are far more likely to be criminals than whites. That is a fact. But it is still wrong to presume that an individual black person is a criminal. Everyone should be treated and respected as an individual.
Re: (Score:2)
Being a member of an ethnicity doesn't mean you can't have inaccurate stereotypes about it.
Nonsense. Discrimination is wrong whether the stereotypes are accurate or not. Blacks are far more likely to be criminals than whites. That is a fact. But it is still wrong to presume that an individual black person is a criminal. Everyone should be treated and respected as an individual.
That is true, but the point I was making is that at least in the specific case of policing, the bias actually exceeds any truth to the stereotype.
To put it plainly, if the police increased their scrutiny of whites, and decreased their scrutiny of blacks, they'd find more criminals.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you reconcile this statement with renting to people you don't know?
The way I do it is to look at their reviews from previous hosts. If their reviews are good, then race is irrelevant.
Re: (Score:3)
Being a member of an ethnicity doesn't mean you can't have inaccurate stereotypes about it.
You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you?
Re:they also found... (Score:4, Insightful)
>"...that black hosts were also less likely to accept requests from guests with African American-sounding names than with white-sounding ones."
[European-American sounding ones, but yep, probably so.] It is also likely that there is discrimination against Muslim sounding names, and many other types of names, it is certainly not just one category. And if people had access to know what kind of money a prospect has, what type of employment, their credit score, their age, sexual orientation, how they speak, what clothes they typically wear, how fat they are, if they drink, if they smoke, political leanings, legal history, how much schooling was completed, if married, what music they listen to, how many kids, the renters will likely discriminate based on all that, too (and much more).
Welcome to basic human nature. It might suck, but ALL people judge each other all the time, automatically, and most of the time without even knowing. And the scary part is that companies are constantly collecting, aggregating, selling, and using all that kind of information I listed above (and much, much more).... they think they know you.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Tell me about it. Every morning, I have to look someone who's fat, looks tired all the time and should really go to the gym instead of playing Starcraft II late at night.
I guess the easiest solution would be to remove all the mirrors in my place, though.
Re: (Score:2)
My company recently offered debiasing training for hiring... Being an arrogant white male chauvinist pig from a country with little diversity I'll admit I was slightly skeptical. But the training was rather academic and presented some interesting perspectives:
1) it's not racism, it's largely bias (it's predominately unintentional)
2) bias is an deviation error in our decision function (we're not making optimal decisions)
3) bias is a part of our culture (it doesn't matter whether you are part of the minori
It's not rocket science.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
How to ruin you child's chances at anything: (Score:3, Funny)
...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 wee
Re: (Score:3)
Hyphenated first name: redneck.
Hyphenated family name: pretentious shitcock.
Re: (Score:2)
Skin colour doesn't correlate with crime, poverty does. If you treat people like second class citizens you help ensure they remain poor by denying then opportunities.
There is a system in place to handle bad customers and you should have insurance on your place if you are renting it out. That's the deal society offers, if you want to operate commercially then you have to be non discriminatory.
Re: (Score:2)
Skin colour doesn't correlate with crime, poverty does.
That's a bit like "Being female does not correlate with having breasts, hormone-levels does. ".
Lack of delayed-gratification, low IQ and poor impulse-control lead to both poverty and crime.
But is this really about fear of crime? If it was, we'd expect to see black women treated similarly to white men.
Gender is a huge factor in crime statistics. Age too. What does AirBnB say about that?
Its a shame they have chosen to address this issue by taking hiding information, instead of providing more information.
Once
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Skin colour doesn't correlate with crime, poverty does.
This is wrong. Skin color does correlate with crime in the USA, a lot more than poverty.
The correlation with a composite of total violent crime was higher with skin color (r=.55), a more biologically influenced variable than with GDP (r=.17), a more culturally influenced variable. These results corroborate and extend those found at the international level using INTERPOL crime statistics and at the county, provincial, and state levels within countries using local statistics.
http://philipperushton.net/wp-... [philipperushton.net]
Of course that was in 2011, I'm sure all those diversity programs in Silicon Valley companies changed everything.
Re:It's not rocket science.. (Score:4, Informative)
That paper and many others like it have been debunked extensively. Apart from the correlation being weak, they don't account for historical disadvantages like poverty, broken homes and oppression. They also use flawed measurement methods like the IQ test, which favours certain cultures and those with educational resources.
http://thealternativehypothesi... [thealterna...thesis.org]
It's just white supremacy dressed up as science.
Re:It's not rocket science.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That paper and many others like it have been debunked extensively. Apart from the correlation being weak, they don't account for historical disadvantages like poverty, broken homes and oppression.
You confuse "correlation" and "cause"; that was obvious in your first reply but even more now that you say that a study does not "take into account" various factors like poverty and oppression when they identify a correlation between skin color and crime. Oppression, really?
Because you confuse those two things, you let your emotions take over and lose objectivity, and you jump to conclusion. As an example, you say that this study from a Canadian university is racist and has been debunked extensively, which is clearly total bullshit. And the only link you provide to support your self-righteous diatribe is the part 2 of some random blog post series on a broken wordpress site which has nothing to do with nothing except it has the words "debunking" and "race" in the title.
So please take a deep breath and think about this objectively. If you maintain that the study I linked has been "debunked" or is racist, please post relevant links to support your point because as it stands it just looks like you googled "debunking racist study" or somehing like that and posted one of the results, which has no relation whatsoever with the study.
Re:It's not rocket science.. (Score:5, Informative)
Oh for God's sake. You're citing Philippe Rushton, a textbook definition of a racist, past president of the Pioneer Fund and frequent contributor to American Renaissance, both organizations classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups, and you want us to give equal weight to his arguments that blacks have smaller brains and unrestrained libido? He's been thoroughly debunked by many, but Joseph Grave's debunking [mathsci.free.fr] of Rushton is one of the most thorough.
It's a sad day for slashdot when works by a noted racist thinker gets modded +5 and conspiracy theories on a presidential candidate's health make the front page.
Re: (Score:3)
The link does not provide anything that would support your statement.
Rushton is a known and discredited racist (Score:4, Insightful)
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/... [wikipedia.org]
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.
The problem with this (Score:2)
Here, even though 18% of the population may commit 40% of the crimes, it still only means that one of those people has a 2.2% chance (0.4% divided by 0.18) of being a criminal. If you therefore deny him a service due to fear of him being a criminal, you are still 97.8% likely to have commited an error.
Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
Decide you wanna protect your own property and suddenly you're racist
Come on (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Come on your face (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Come on, can't we get some happy, nerdy news on Slashdot anymore?
Immediately under this article is a story about the launch of a spacecraft to intercept NASA. I know people's attention span is getting shorter but seriously man, that's a new low as far as complaints go.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I'll admit it: I've been trying to get a +5 Troll post for a long time now. I can feel it coming but, maybe I haven't completely mastered that art yet.
Will the renters be COMPELLED to rent? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't have to go that far. They can rank the discriminatory hosts last so that most potential renters won't see them.
Re:Will the renters be COMPELLED to rent? (Score:5, Interesting)
That will mean violating the customer's trust — if I am sorting by rankings, the site will be lying to me if they let (alleged) bigotry weight somebody down beyond the low rating the alleging party has left.
Maybe, they can add a separate criteria for "political correctness" or "adherence to Social Justice principles" — and see, how many will choose their next room based on that...
Perhaps more importantly, if the discrimination really is as widespread as is being alleged, your method simply will not help...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That will mean violating the customer's trust — if I am sorting by rankings, the site will be lying to me if they let (alleged) bigotry weight somebody down beyond the low rating the alleging party has left.
Uber already does that to a degree. If you ignore three requests in a row for pickups, the driver is kicked offline for 30 minutes (in some areas).
The same thing could be done with AirBnB. It doesn't matter if the AirBnB owner is racist, or just unavailable. And it's too difficult to tell anyway. It's just that if the owner of an AirBnB is too unresponsive to some of his/her potential customers, AirBnB should just place that specific AirBnB at the back of the queue for a couple of days.
Re: Will the renters be COMPELLED to rent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, until the people forced to accommodate destructive guests stop using the service, and the people forced to the bottom of the list stop using the service.
Problem solved!
I mean the problem of Airbnb having to worry about public perception, because they're out of business. They haven't done shit about racism, and neither will the company who steals their clients.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
If companies didn't have the ability to influence the actions of their customers then marketing as a discipline would not exist.
Re: (Score:2)
The owners of the real estate being rented aren't "customers". In the traditional scheme of things, they are more like "suppliers".
They aren't as feeble-minded as regular consumers and thus not as easily manipulated by marketing. Not to say, they can not be persuaded at all — indeed, persuasion is the only legitimate way of fighting real racism — but it will not be as
Re: (Score:2)
They are going to make it so that if they refuse to rent on certain dates they can't then rent them out to someone else later. So racism will cost them days that they could have made profit from.
I can see it being somewhat effective because profit is a great motivator to overcome bigotry.
Re: (Score:2)
Is one a racist only on certain dates?!.. I never knew about such a phenomenon — could you elaborate?
It probably is. But there are two things to note:
Re: (Score:2)
Fortunately, AirBnB does not have the government's power and monopoly. Whatever they do is doomed to failure.
What AirBnB could do (in principle, at least; dunno if this would be practical) is partially anonymize their customers so that it was difficult or impossible to determine an applicant's race from his application. Then property owners would be unable to make decisions based on prejudice, since the data necessary to do so would not be available to them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Anonymity will not help — there are very few obviously Black names. They need to disable photos — which were denounced as a major instrument of racism [eeoc.gov] for almost a century already. But that would mean removal of an important feature of the system by making it impersonal...
My personal opinion is that while racism is regrettable, its impact is overrated and far less d
Re: (Score:2)
The main difference between black people and east Asian people in the US is that black people are much more likely to still be suffering from the legacy of historic disadvantage.
The stereotypes have flipped round in some cases. The Japanese were seen as lazy and stupid around 1900, but are now regarded had hard working to the point of killing themselves with stress.
With black people it's largely still the same bullshit as 200+ years ago.
Yes (Score:2)
Risk management (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think they will have any luck with cajoling people into abandoning basic risk management when it comes to renting their property.
Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazing that a population associated with 2500% more murders per capita has a 16% less acceptance rate.
Triggering on the wrong bias point (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Triggering on the wrong bias point (Score:5, Informative)
It's kinda like how most eBay listings used to be people getting rid of unused crap in their homes, but now it's mostly people running businesses with eBay as a storefront. Or Uber and Lyft, which started out as "these people want to go to the same place you are, why not give them a ride and make a few bucks?" But now the drivers are all doing it as a full-time business.
Re: (Score:2)
First off, I would never rent my house for a week or two. I just don't trust people that much.
Renting your own house is one thing. All your stuff is in there. But if you had a duplex for instance or a second apartment, that might be a different story. In my area, the riskier tenants are the ones that stay for more than 30 days, because then rent control and renters rights go into effect, and it becomes almost impossible to evict them (even if they decide to stop paying rent).
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.
Does Airbnb give you their age? And what about the parent who gets an Airbnb for his/her 20 years old son? Are you allowed to
Did they collect risk and damage data? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't know that. Maybe for the black population as a whole it would be high but Airbnb is a particular subset.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not. Crime is correlated with poverty, not skin colour. Being able to afford an Airbnb is self selecting. It bet there is no statistical difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Did they collect risk and damage data? (Score:2)
Or they could show that individual variance is much larger than difference in race-based population averages. Implying that judging risk based on race is a poor predictor.
Re: (Score:2)
Why should they have to do the research to disprove people's prejudices? If you want to claim blacks cause than whites, shouldn't you be the one to have some information to back up your claim before you start discriminating based on it?
New business opportunity! (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be like that white only dating site. An opportunity to label yourself as a racist, become a social outcast and lose your job.
Someone should do it, just to see how many people sign up.
Re: (Score:3)
It's called having a sexual preference, for fuck's sake! Do I have to date 60 year olds now so I can dodge being accused of being ageist?
Where the FUCK does political correctness end? What's next, any straight person who doesn't want to engage in homosexual activity is homophobic? Would you force me to fuck a woman? I can tell you that much: Nu-uh, not gonna work!
And no, I don't want to fuck a black guy. Why? 'cause I am into white guys. Why? For the same damn reason others are into black guys, black women,
Re:New business opportunity! (Score:4, Insightful)
A black man's take on Lyft driver vs SJW video (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Are non-whites not getting rental housing? (Score:2)
My first question is whether there's an actual harm being experienced by non-white renters. Are they experiencing an inability to rent on AirBnB? Short term housing in general, such as hotels or resorts?
How picky are AirBnB renters allowed to be generally? AFAIK where I live if you own a duplex or some other owner-occupied property you're allowed to refuse rental to anyone.
My sense is that as long as it doesn't meaningfully prevent people from renting in an area, who cares? If someone doesn't like me be
nothing more illogical than race relations (Score:4, Insightful)
16%??? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:In other words. . . (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: In other words. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is why it's ok to be racist against white people but not ok to be racist against black people?
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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. No
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, I was coming here to say, Those who don't know the hotel business are doomed to reinvent it—poorly.
Re:In other words. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [economist.com]. 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.
Re:In other words. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:In other words. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [economist.com] 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.
Re: (Score:3)
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 [economist.com] 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.
Re: (Score:3)
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?
Re: (Score:3)
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 becau
Re: In other words. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Not as closely as it should be....
Re: (Score:2)
The problem seems to be partially systemic in the way Airbnb works. Insufficient information to make an unbiased decision. Do they require insurance against damage done by renters?
Re: (Score:3)
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 onl
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, with AirBNB the payment is taken before you arrive.
A credit check is a lot more meaningful than just whether people will pay their bills. Otherwise, prospective employers would never run them. A bad credit score often indicates that someone is disorganized, dysfunctional, and likely dishonest. I know people (mostly relatives) with dismal credit scores and I definitely would not like to work with any of them. Credit scores are strongly correlated with employee performance. You also want to look at other factors: The browser they used to submit their re
Re: (Score:3)
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
Re:Flip Side (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
The worse renters are French people. They whine about everything.
It's funny that you mention that. I just had a family from France, and they hit a deer on the way to my place. They were late, but okay. I took their car rental numbers and my wife called the company and got them set up to get a replacement car. The next morning, I gave them the information and helped them get on their way. This should be an "easy A", non? They thanked me in their review, but my score dropped anyway. I guess waiting late and dealing with rental companies on behalf of guests is expected for
Re:Flip Side (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Flip Side (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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
Re: (Score:2)
First, you don't have a house. Second, if you had one, nobody would want to rent it anyways.