#AirbnbWhileBlack

Instances of passive and active racism seem rampant throughout our society today. It has been well established that in some instances in the service industry African American clients are discriminated against, whether it be being followed by security when shopping or receiving inadequate service when dining. Now it seems that the room sharing service AirBnb is being plagued by the same type of discrimination that is present in other facets of the service industry.

“Quirtina Crittenden was struggling to get a room on Airbnb,” she would send a request to a host but would then be denied. This issue turned from a minor inconvenience to one that brought up questions of discrimination when Quirtina would check back several days later and see the same listing still vacant. One would think that Quirtina would be the ideal person for AirBnb. She is young, with a good paying job, and travels a lot. Perhaps this issue could have something to do with her race since AirBnb requires that hosts and guests permanently display their names and photos on their profiles.

It was not until Quirtina shared her frustrations on the internet with the hashtag “#AirbnbWhileBlack” that we found that similar instances of discrimination were rampant across the service. These suspicions were seemingly confirmed when Quirtina changed her profile to a racially neutral name and a picture of a cityscape. Following the change she did not have any issues finding a room on AirBnb.

A study done by the Harvard Business School has found substantial evidence of this bias in the AirBnb system. The study went out thousands of AirBnb requests; all requests were identical except for the name of the client. Some profiles had African American sounding names while others had stereotypically “white” names. They found clear evidence that the African American profiles had a much more difficult time finding a host than the while profiles. Surprisingly, this was a universal theme amongst all of the hosts regardless of race. African American hosts rejected African American clients just as frequently as white hosts. Guests also discriminate too. It was found that African American hosts typically earned less for their properties than white hosts with comparable properties and hosting experiences.

This rampant discrimination across the service is likely due to unconscious bias. Hosts make determinations about a client based solely on a picture and a name. Discrimination on a service like AirBnb is difficult to fight because the service itself is not directly responsible for this discrimination. One solution would be to remove the picture and name part of the AirBnb service, but this is unlikely to happen. The Internet is a dangerous place and it offers hosts and clients alike a certain piece of mind to know that the person they have been contacting over the Internet is the person that will show up at the door. In our society of awareness about discrimination, the Internet is likely going to be one of the last fortresses of steadfast discrimination because on the Internet one can hide behind a wall of anonymity.

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/26/475623339/-airbnbwhileblack-how-hidden-bias-shapes-the-sharing-economy