About people discriminating?
People with names that suggest they are black are being discriminated against on room sharing site AirBnB, a Harvard study suggests.
A survey of more than 6,000 hosts in five US cities concluded that names that sounded African-American were about 16% less likely to get a positive response to a request for a room when compared against white-sounding names like Brad or Kristen.
Thing is,
AirBnB is an online service which allows people to rent out rooms in their homes, or even entire properties.
The crucial point here is; “in their own homes”. So if people want to discriminate about which strangers they allow over the threshold, that should be a matter for them and them alone. Indeed, I discriminate to such an extent, I would never sign up for this service – I’ll be damned if I have strangers sleeping in my house – paying guests or not. I guess that makes me a racist or something…
Even if you agree to the terms and conditions of AirBnB, it is still your home, so ultimately, you should have the absolute right to determine who sleeps in it. And if you are a racist who doesn’t like black people, then why would a black person want to force themselves on you in the first place. Unless it is so they can be turned away and take it to the courts, much like the homosexuals who did likewise to the Christian couple who ran a guest house a couple of years back.
The study suggested that black hosts were just as likely to discriminate against black people as white hosts were.
Snork!
Frankly, though, my take on this is; so what? People choosing not to let their homes to strangers based upon their own prejudices is not an issue. No, really it’s not.
I’m slightly torn here, I suppose that when it comes to rights, they can’t be universal because one person’s rights will always end up overlapping someone else’s in a way that can’t be accommodating to both. So on the one hand I go with ‘your gaff your rules’ but in the case of services generally I don’t think that you should be able to turn people away for reasons of race. In this specific case, as long as there are people of all shades willing to house share and nobody loses out I don’t see a problem. It is interesting to note that the article does admit to the elephant in the room that is black people being racist against white people. There seem to be some who are unable to admit that this is possible.
Regarding the gay couple, I think that they deliberately provoked a court case so that the issue went to court and set a precedent. I think that the gay rights movement probably feared that this particular piece of equality law could well end up never being enforced. As I mentioned above, as long as there are gay friendly hotels out there nobody is going to lose out, but I think that I can understand why they did it.
The “my gaff, my rules” should always prevail.There will always be other establishments with differing rules. In this particular case, it is people letting out rooms in their homes. They are not service providers in the same way as a business is. Even then, “my gaff, my rules” should apply. No one should be forced to do business with anyone they choose not to. I turn work away on the basis of not particularly liking the potential client. I expect to be free to continue doing just that.
I seriously doubt that you have ever refused to do business with anyone because they were black or Jewish or gay. I would suspect that when you refuse to do business with someone you have good reason to do so.
Indeed so. Because they are likely to be bad for business usually. That is, they would damage my reputation.