Quote:
Originally posted by Tropez
It's the same issue with taxis. A black person is less likely to hail a taxi than a white person. There was even a story of a taxi driver refusing to service a black woman.
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It's a little bit different.
The problem here is a taxi service is a professional service, usually not owned by the person actually driving the taxi. In that respect, it's still as if someone is denying you the right to a basic service. The cars themselves usually don't even belong to the people driving them.
However, with Airbnb, this is a service that connects you to people who may or may not allow you to stay in their home at their discretion. As a black person, I definitely see the inherent injustice in someone refusing to accept you in their home due to your skin color.
But it's still THEIR house and it's still their right to say who can and cannot enter their house. At best, Airbnb can provide some sort of system where feedback reflects the participant's racist tendencies. But they cannot force someone to open their home to a POC if they don't want to. Everyone has the right to privacy in their own home and honestly, as much as it may seem abhorrent, people do have the right to refuse you entry into their house if they don't like the color of your skin. It's that same principle that allows you to refuse entry to someone you don't know or you have a "bad feeling" about.
I'm not defending the people for being racist. I'm just saying there's really no way for Airbnb to circumvent this in any significant manner.
