Airbnb inclusivity

[Anonymous]

"Here are the keys to my house. You have a room to yourself, you can come and go at your leisure, my personal life is fully on display to you, and you can join my family in our shared space whenever you wish to have company. Here's a leash if you'd like my dog to walk you to the best park."

That is the default orientation that a typical homestay host like myself offers. Not because we're trying to adhere to some notion of "inclusivity" concocted by a boardroom full of newly minted billionaire white men in San Francisco, but because we care about a humanistic tradition of hospitality that predates the corporate culture of superficial virtue-signaling by millennia.

We do this on the basis of far more trust than is even rational, considering the fact that our guests come through a listing service that deliberately withholds valuable information about the people we're letting into our homes, because it doesn't trust us to be "inclusive" on our own free will.

Apologies if this is outdated, but here is the panel of people who are trying to teach us a lesson in what it means to be inclusive:

I challenge every host to look back through the history of guests they've welcomed into their homes and find a group less diverse than this. Do these magical concepts of Inclusivity and Belonging not apply to the 67% male, overwhelmingly-white boardroom?

[Ann72]

@Inna22  Thank you for the explanation - that's very clear and makes sense.  Still, doing nothing until they get that table sorted out seems wrong to me.

Big hug to you.

[Sarah977]

@Inna22  Good explanation. But we should also keep in mind that discrimination is not just a skin color issue.

"When white people enter any space, we assume they will be included, we assume we will meet people like us, we assume we will be accepted as we are."

It depends where you are in the world as to whether this is true. I spent a little time in Jamaica, and encountered anti-white sentiment there and got a taste if what it feels like to feel you are judged by the color of your skin.

As as both you and I know, being white had no bearing on being accepted, as far as European Jews were concerned during Hitler's reign.

[Helen3]

Great explanation @Innna22

[Anonymous]

@Ann72  At the Airbnb Open 6 years ago, there was an awkward moment in one exec's speech where he said to a huge crowd of hosts, with a totally straight face, that he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for how much Airbnb promotes inclusivity. Needless to say, that rubbed pretty much everyone in the room the wrong way, and not just for the absurdity of a young tech bro comparing himself to Nelson Mandela. 

Remember, this was around the same time that Airbnb was in damage-control mode over the bad press they got about discrimination complaints from non-white guests. Their response was to punish all hosts for the biases of a few by blocking guests' profile photos in requests. Message received: "our virtues are so perfect that we deserve awards for talking about them, but the hosts whose work we're taking credit for can't be trusted to see the face of someone who's asking for keys to their house."

I don't see this self-congratulatory arrogance as a step in the right direction. 

[Ann72]

@Anonymous   Uugghhh!  Well said.  That Silicon Valley arrogance is toxic.

I do just want to say that as a 60-something, my 20-something daughters have taught me that all the things my liberal white ass thinks it's good at deserve examination and re-thinking, so I try to listen and participate.  I don't know if you saw my comment elsewhere, but in consultation with my millennial squad I put up an "all are welcome here" sign on my listing to make wary travelers feel a little more comfortable.  My place is rural and they might have anxiety about how accepting the neighborhood is.

[Ute42]

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@Anonymous @Ann72

As we all know since early 2019 we can't see the guests profile pictures anymore before accepting a reservation. Was that airbnb's idea and contribution to more inclusivity? No, they were ordered to do so by THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON.

https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2834&context=historical

Actually, airbnb wanted to continue to show the pictures. They said in the court hearing that the picture of a guest’s face shows that the guest is

• “reliable, authentic, and committed to the spirit of Airbnb“ (see page 4 of the document)
  

Airbnb lost the lawsuit on oct 30, 2018 and early 2019 they removed the guest pictures. Did You know that?

[Anonymous]

@Ute42  Interesting, I didn't know about that case. It's the first one I've read in which a district court explicitly defined Airbnb as a public accommodation, which would seem to have some far-reaching consequences.

In terms of messaging, it's understandable that they didn't come right out and say "we lost another lawsuit" (that's never good PR), but they sure did make it sound like it was their own idea in this press release:  https://www.airbnb.com/against-discrimination

[Mark116]

@Anonymous  Yeah, a 'public accommodation' means handicapped accessible and a host of other regulations.  If that is case, it goes a long way to explaining why Airbnb started buying hotels and apartment buildings, because many, many if not most of the hosts will never be able to meet such standards, I know we couldn't.  Odd that such a ruling never got any coverage.

[Sarah977]

@Ute42  Wow, thanks for that info. I had no idea, and Airbnb certainly presented the hiding of profile photos as if it was their own policy decision.

Interesting too, that they didn't even make that known when hosts made loud and clear protests about this. It's obviously more important to them to hide the fact that they aren't the all-powerful we-can-do-whatever-we-want platform, than to avoid host outrage. If they had made the reason for profile photo hiding known, they wouldn't have had angry hosts blaming them for a bad decision.

Reading through that link, I also saw that the plantiff didn't bring the suit on the basis that they were discriminated against, but that they could be.  They didn't even have an Airbnb account.

And why are guests shown hosts' profile photos before they book? Isn't it just as likely that some guests would choose not to book a listing because they saw that the host was black, brown, Asian, etc? Could those hosts be at a disadvantage and losing bookings because their photo is  there for guests to see?

[Ann72]

@Sarah977 @Ute42 @Kath9  Reading this makes me think of hailing a taxi in New York.  I can't tell you how often I have watched a well dressed man or woman of color see cab after available cab pass them by.  Yet I have never seen a white person hail a cab and then refuse to get in when they see it is driven by a person of color.  People of color have been refused service at restaurants millions of time, but how many white people have refused to eat dinner in a restaurant where the food was prepared and served by a person or people of color?  While I'm sure these scenarios have happened, they are far less likely and probably far outweighed by discrimination by a business owner or employee against a customer.

[Ann72]

I did not know anything about that @Ute42 - wow.  So here's the thing about Airbnb's endemic lack of transparency - if we had known that, we would have bonded with Airbnb more, possibly even tried to think of ways to fight that court decision.  

[Kath9]

@Ute42, @Anonymous I had no idea of this! I wonder why Airbnb didn't explain this to us less-than-impressed hosts at the time. @Sarah977 , thanks for reading through the case and pointing out that plaintiffs brought the suit on the basis of potential discrimination. Here's an extract:

Because Airbnb allows hosts to view the photograph and name of a prospective guest ... a host can deny a booking request for any reason, including the race or color of a prospective guest. Airbnb is aware that some hosts refuse to rent accommodations to prospective guests on the basis of race or color. Airbnb is also aware that African-Americans are less likely to be confirmed for booking as guests ... than are persons who are not African-Americans. Because some hosts refuse to rent accommodations to African-Americans, some accommodations listed on Airbnb’s online platform are unavailable to African-American travelers. African-Americans, thus, do not have full and equal access to the accommodations and services offered on Airbnb’s online platform.

As a white person, I have no experience of discrimination based on race. But it's heartbreaking that people feel such discrimination that they felt the need to contest a case based on what may (and clearly does) happen. So, while the outcome of this case may have been the direct cause of us no longer being able to see photographs, the underlying cause is the fact that people are discriminated against, all the time. This helps me to understand and appreciate why the photos have been blocked. It's just a shame that it means that we are unable to 'discriminate' against our guests based on other factors, such as the profile photo a host once posted here of a prospective guest wielding an automatic weapon (um, no thanks). While I get it, enforced anti-discrimination potentially comes at the expense of host safety.

[Melodie-And-John0]

Wow  @Ute42, that certainly clarifies some cloudy practices, I never would have guessed it was a very short sighted US court ruling that created the veil of anonymity that we are stuck with today.  Thats the laws of unintended consequences clearly illustrated!   

[Melodie-And-John0]

@Ann72 , the laws of unintended consequences are always at play be you liberal or conservative I assure you.   I've worked in a small Liberal Arts University for nearly 3 decades and work directly with lots of international and lower income work study students that have more often than not pointed out the things that are being hailed as the greatest problems of today are things their grandparents were confronted with not them, "Thats so 80's"!

One particular conversation I remember well about 15 years ago when we were all taking a break comes to mind that I wont ever forget.   The group consisted of a couple light skinned electronics technicians, a jewish (Hannah) daughter of a rather well to do local attorney and a couple dark skinned students from Africa.   Hanna brought up the fact that she was very active in the community in support of black rights because most black people were treated so poorly in the US.  One of the young men Andy from Africa cut her off and said she didnt know what she was taking about.  He went on to say the US was like heaven compared to the country and continent he was from where the punishment for walking down the wrong street could be a beating, death, rape or prison.   (Poor Hannah looked like she lost her puppy).   I chimed in that The US wasn't exempt from any of those but it wasnt endemic here like he described.  We had pockets big and small of that type of racism, police strong-arming  and gang affiliated violence then and its still happening today in some of our largest cities, still more work to do but most of our younger adult citizens personally dont experience those things as the greatest problems that they are confronted with. 

Pressures from society to immediately compete, take first prize and reach a level of perfection and success out of the gate are far bigger issues for most of them no matter what their skin color is.  I really didn't get that when I was young, always knew it was going to be an imperfect muddy climb and it hasn't disappointed me all that much  that im still getting dirty as an old man!   But I digress...

[Ute42]

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@Stephanie @Lizzie 

You had moved Andrew's post from another thread and made it the opening post of this very thread stating that „it's not entirely relevant to the question asked in the OP (of the old thread)“

Meanwhile the same situation has developped in this new thread. While Andrew in it's (now new) OP ist talking about „Airbnb inclusivity“ with reference to airbnbs top management roster, a new topic has come up and that is „Profile Pictures“. That's quite different from what Andrew is talking about.

May I therefore suggest that You generate a new thread on this new topic starting right here

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Airbnb-inclusivity/m-p/1417947/highlight/true#M337087

and ending right there:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/Airbnb-inclusivity/m-p/1418116/highlight/true#M337116

As the new thread headline I suggest:

• The truth about profile pictures

This headline should be ok and in full line with the CC-guidelines, because on march 15, 2019, I have posted a thread with the exact same headline in the German Community Center which never got complained about by the mods. The thread title was:

• Die Wahrheit über Profilbilder

in English

• The truth about pfrofile pictures

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Gastgeber-unter-sich/Die-Wahrheit-%C3%BCber-Profilbilder/m-p/965...

cc: @Melodie-And-John0 @Anonymous @Jessica-and-Henry0  Sarah977 @Kath9  @Emilia42 @Ann72 @Emiel1