Huh? Post 3 was one and seemed a reasonable answer.
Jragon, your observations are most lucid on the subject, and closely parallel the opinion written by Potter Stewart (Warren Court) in Jacobellis v Ohio, stating that in the absence of
verifiable metrics, perception is valid . . .
Actually, given (as the OP said) the likely typical attitude among AirBnBers in that area*, I think it makes it a little more likely that the various excuses given for not accepting the person of color WERE legitimate. I really think a lot of people would go out of their way to have a person of color stay in their home through a program such as this. It gives them a chance to congratulate themselves on their relative lack of racism (which ties into that “white guilt” thing on some level.)
But I could be wrong.
*oops, generalizing about a set of people! Hmm…
(ETA off topic: I’m relieved to see that geezer is apparently just engaging in some silliness…not quite ready for the Algonquin Round Table, but harmless enough, it seems.)
Everyone’s a little bit racist. There is no question that we all (including people of color) have stereotypes that we act upon without even being aware of it. Few today might endorse explicit racist statements (obviously some do) but many (most) still have implicit racist beliefs.
A pdf of a more academic treatment of the subject.
Pertinent to the op, it is possible that people can at the same time denounce racism and mean it while still making the decision to choose a White or Asian person to rent to without even being aware that their decision was based on race. And people who do that would take honest offense at being told that such was what they did because they have no conscious awareness of it. To think that anyone is completely non-racist is naive. The best we can hope for is that we explicitly work against racism and attempt to become conscious of and in control of our implicit beliefs that drive behaviors despite ourselves.
I really feel the need to second this.
Nicely done, Reply.
I think you are underestimating people’s tendencies to say one thing and do another. Some of the most self-congratulatory tolerant people I know also happen to be the folks who are likely to say the dumbest shit when they forget the walls have ears. Perhaps they think they can “get away with it” because of course they aren’t RACIST. Or maybe they think racism is about violence and hatred, but not the little things…like mimicking yours truly in faux-Ebonics/slave dialect when I speak more “proper” than anyone else I know. Or when they conflate “bad neighborhood” with “predominately minority neighborhood” and roll their eyes when I try to dissuade them of this notion.
People who pride themselves on how non-racist they are are the folks I watch out for the most since they have a huge blindspot. People who lack self-awareness are scary.
NPR had a show about AirBnB a month or so ago, and a black Brooklynite who rents out her spare bedroom was interviewed. She talked about how she thought she’d been discriminated against and how her black friends all had similar experiences. And then she said something at the end that was telling: she discriminates too. Not necessarily against black or white people, but against people who don’t look "right’. And she laughed about it. There’s no doubt that she gets enough guests where she can be picky like this, being in NYC. I bet any host in the SF area is in a similar situation, where they don’t have to “settle” for any ole black man that comes knocking on their door. If you had a choice between the guy who is different from you–who you have subconsciously associated with negative qualities–and a guy who you perceived to be similar to you–who seems to be interesting, like maybe he’d be cool to hang-out with–well, even I can see how the choice wouldn’t be that hard.
Many AirBnB spots are just a spare bedroom or couch, and the guest shares the bathroom with the host. Most folks are not comfortable with that level of intimacy even with people who are like them. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that someone would not want to have this experience with a strange black man, given all the conscious and subconscious baggage that is associated with black people.
See, the problem here, as it seems to me, is you’re confusing cultural and societal factors with racial stereotypes they’re based on, then taking that a step further and believing these “proclivities” are because of their race.
As far as the Sicilian remark, I only asked because I’m from Sicilian descent. It usually falls under Caucasian, but Sicily is such a hodge-podge of ethnic mixing (mostly Mediterranean) over the course of thousands of years, it could be used to bring up the point "how do you define “race” and where to draw those lines (especially when it can become so blurred).
I have absolutely zero idea what you’re talking about regarding Sicilians being gay (wtf?). Also “decent” was merely a typo.
DSeid and Monstro, thank you for your posts. From the moment this thread started, I was hoping someone would eloquently address the ways in which ALL of us have reactions to events in our lives that are colored (!) by racialized thought patterns. And that would even include what I mentioned – the “going out of one’s way to accept/invite an AirBnB requester who is of a racial minority.” But I concur that *that particular *action is practiced by a small subset even of self-described progressives, even in SF.
I just fundamentally disagree with almost everything you posted here. I get what you think you are saying, but here is why I think you are wrong.
I think there are a good chunk of people who have learned not to make it a factor. Political correctness, or more correctly, socially enforced human decency, is an integral part of that. You seem to be dismissing the end because you don’t like the means. This is just fundamentally wrong in my opinion and ignores the growing body of research in many fields that lends credence to the theories that external circumstances needn’t dictate how you view things, and that social norms matter a lot. To use a less controversial example to emphasize the former, consider synthetic happiness. You can be happy, even when terrible things happen to you, because you will yourself to be.
Similarly, we can try to stop being motivated by race, gender, religion, etc. if we individually decide we are not going to let it matter. That doesn’t mean we don’t see race, it means we don’t let our biases creep into places they don’t belong.
Why is that a bad thing? Or rather, what makes you think bald candor would lead to better outcomes? Do you think the desire to hide one’s racism arose in a vacuum, or was it adaptive behavior that is a net positive?
I always love how everyone says they can’t discuss X because of political correctness during a discussion of X. It’s like when all these NFL GMs, speaking off the record, lament how Micheal Sam’s draft stock is gonna plummet because he is gay… as if they have no say in the matter. Society has never been judgement free wrt to speech. More importantly, it’s not everyone else’s job to make sure you get with the program. Honestly, how many times to do you expect society to collectively stop and pause without judgement while they answer the latest permutation of, “why I can’t be an asshole” posited by some non-thinker?
More directly, I think you are ignoring the fact that these problems are difficult not because we cannot discuss race, but because they are difficult problems to solve. Things like poverty and discrimination are hard to solve because they are complex, not because people are too sensitive or wish to shut down discussion.
Maybe because we have collectively done that millions of times, and because “understanding” does not necessarily beget harmony. Moreover, this wasn’t someone saying, “hey I’m afraid of Black people”, it was a ugly, facile comparison between Black people and animals. Generally speaking, people who reach such irrational positions are not gonna be talked out of them rationally. Plus, why should I, as the subject of his derision, take on the burden of attempting to disabused him of his ugly, hateful views? Why do you think talking to these people, who no doubt don’t even know 50 Black people, is a worthy exercise in any shape or form?
Well, it doesn’t get talked about because it doesn’t exist in most places. Maybe in the rarefied air of San Francisco, but Asian people are still discriminated against.
But Asians are not in fact pulling the strings. Neither are most White people for record. SF is not really representative of the US in any way, shape, or form.
I work with kids. I don’t know ANY parent who has ever told their kids that race has no bearing on society. In particular, I don’t know any Black parent who hasn’t had a serious discussion about race with their kids. Nobody I know pretends race doesn’t matter. They may explain how it’s not a valid concept, and that it shouldn’t factor into their decision making, but they never say it doesn’t matter.
While I think most people have biases, I don’t think most people are racist. You are misusing the term in my opinion to make it so broad it has no meaning.
Complete bullshit. How you interpreted:
[QUOTE=geezer1]
Does being aware of proclivities of specific races, and acting thereon make one racist ? ?
If you see 50 dobermans running toward you, 2 of them may want belly-rubs, but the other 48 want lunch, and this statement is meant to emphasize the way things are, not the way we would like them to be . . .
If you keep your head stuck in the sand, you’re not going to be able to see who kicks your butt . . .
[/QUOTE]
As what you summarized it really makes it hard to take you seriously.
I understand the sentiment. I don’t really care to understand him as it will have little bearing on my life. He is distasteful stranger, not some deep thinker whose insights will affect my life in any way. I think you just don’t get it. You act as if talking to him is gonna make me more okay being compared to a dog out to injure him. As if him explaining my “racial proclivities” is illuminating in any way.
No, it’s using ridicule to point out how the disqualifying statements he’s made basically aren’t worthy of dissection, or his inclusion in this community of generally astute people.
How do you think you came to realize racism was a bad thing?
I doubt you are. You may look at a global crime statistic and see that Blacks are more likely to commit certain crimes, but you are not actually looking at relevant statistics in the setting you mention. It’s like hearing that Muhammad is the common first name in the world, and assuming the White guy you meet in Cleveland is probably named Muhammad. For example, Whites are more than 6 times more likely to be murdered by another White person than a Black person. That’s using actual statistics, and even that is more than a little problematic. You are not employing actual statistic thinking, you falling victim to confirmation bias.
Just to emphasize how faulty your thinking is here, please try to guess how likely some Black guy walking down an alley in SF is to rob an Asian guy? Please tell me how that compares to some of the other things you think are worth worrying about or reacting to (eg. it raining, whether the supermarket prices are correct, etc.). Also, please quantify how much his race matters relative to the person’s clothing choices, gender, movements, or actions? How much does the weather, location of the alley, or the time of day matter?
You probably shouldn’t feel scared; maybe more embarrassed. PC has nothing to do with it. You are just trying to justify your biases using bad data, and to give credence to your emotions just because you think they are pure.
Besides this, there is another often overlooked issue in these discussions. The people who are being racists have a legitimate problem they don’t know how else to solve.
When people are looking through profiles of people who want to rent space in their homes, they will try to decide whether that person is dangerous or at least comfortable to be around. If they know nothing about that person, and all they have is a picture (or some demographic information), what else are they going to use to judge?
This is the same problem the police have. They have to judge people all the time, and they usually have nothing to go by except appearance. And if they judge wrong, someone can get hurt. What’s an officer to do in that situation? If no one teaches them how to discriminate, how to avoid using race as a method of discrimination, then the officer will use his intuition, which means they’ll rely on race.
Unfortunately, even when people are being racist, they sometimes have legitimate goals that they don’t know how else to accomplish. The solution could be to make them aware of the methods they are using (racial discrimination) and teach them new methods for accomplishing their goals (discriminating among nearly anonymous renters).
If AirBnB wanted to be proactive about this situation, then maybe they could keep racial statistics about the people users accept and reject. Then maybe Dave or Carol will get a message like, “Our records show that you have rejected 90% of black users who have requested to rent your space, are you sure you are not rejecting people because of their skin color?”
AirBnB can also include a link to information about more racially neutral methods of discriminating among house guests.
They can also make these statistics public, and then deal with complaints of reverse discrimination because of people trying to look good by renting to minorities. It would almost be how we handled discrimination in University admissions.
Personally I see it as a continuum of awareness.
Step 1. Racism is bad.
Step 2. Working against explicit racism and against institutionalized racism that is not the product of any individual’s explicit beliefs but a result of how systems operate as a matter of historic legacy and inertia. This in small part means learning to speak with some sensitivity and object to hurtful speech even if not spoken with hateful intent.
Step 3. Being aware that we each, all of us, still are the result of our exposures, including our limited selection of real life exposures and media images, and that we are unavoidably tribal by our nature, thus we all make subconscious implicit presumptions based on superficial characteristics until we have enough other information to override them.
Part a of that is being aware of that in general and being able to discuss it, in the general case.
Part b is recognizing how we each do it ourselves without undue defensiveness and working on limiting it and on limiting the system features that perpetuate it.
Lots gets buried in that last part.
One aspect of that is a very individual process. And it is hard because in this country certain sociocultural aspects do sometimes aggregate with certain superficial features. If I see a man who is dressed like an Amish man, for example, I am going to make some presumptions about other aspects of his beliefs … which will either be confirmed or called into question by further contact. Those initial meeting heuristic shortcuts happen and they are not always wrong; they just are not always right. And sometimes they are wrong more often than right but we do not have enough real world experiences to have internalized that.
But accomplishing the other requires some pc-ness. Otherwise the stereotypes that we implicitly internalize get reinforced. We need to be aware that there is a tendency not based on any explicit racist belief to label a Black man with stuff in her arms after a flood as having looted and a White woman as escaping the flood with things she has found. Being aware of how we implicitly make presumptions and consciously working to limit how we perpetuate them is political correctness and is a good thing. It does not preclude real discussions about our biases and why they exist; it instead is almost a necessary precondition for those discussions.
IMHO.
What problem is that exactly, and what other means of solving them do you think these people have tried?
Reviews. Airbnb even has a list of things you can do aside from just discriminating against people because of their race. To quote a few of the most effective:
[QUOTE=Airbnb]
-
Screen profiles and reviews of your potential guests. Look for verified phone numbers, connected social networks, and references, and be sure to read any reviews left by other Airbnb hosts. If their profiles are a bit bare, feel free to ask inquiring guests to complete some profile verifications before booking with you.
-
Set reservation requirements for your listings. Guests won’t be able to send you a reservation request until they have Verified ID.
-
Add a security deposit to your listing. Learn how Airbnb handles security deposits right on the site to help you protect yourself from accidents that occur during a reservation.
[/QUOTE]
I reject your notion that, “being comfortable around” a guest in your home is a fair priority that excuses racism given you decide to rent out your space to strangers. Once you make something business-like and transactional, your relative “comfort” takes a back seat to the rights of your customer.
Either way, this idea that dangerous people, Black or not, are bothering to use Airbnb as a means to victimize people is pretty stupid on its face. Why go to all the trouble when you can commit crimes in a much easier fashion without leaving an enormous paper trail? So while I bet it may have happened in a limited circumstance, it is not something people should likely worry about irrespective of race.
This is just not true even if some cops want to pretend it is. First, not that much police work is based on strangers who they know nothing about beyond how they look. Even if I see some guy in an alley, there are 1000 other contextual clues I have beyond the color of their skin which may inform how I react.
And many more times, they have a problem that only really exists in their mind. I agree people can be taught to think more rationally, but let’s not pretend their problems are usually real and/or legitimate.
Not a bad idea. I think they will eventually have to address this issue in a more forward fashion.
:dubious: What the hell is this even supposed to mean?
While mild in color and flavor, yes, it is known, unfortunately, for this atrocity.
Since there’s no exact data on who is racist and who is not, there’s simply no way to tell. Less educated people who have to compete with minorities for work are often more racist than more educated ones. However, you often see people who have limited educations involved in interracial relationships more often than you do people who highly educated at least in the United States.
Being a minority here in the US, I have found that:
[ol]
[li]The fewer minorities who live in an area, especially a rural or suburban area, the greater the amounts of racism[/li][li]The more that White Americans (currently the majority) have to compete with minorities for jobs, the greater the levels racism[/li][li]Areas of endeavor like sports and the military have lower levels of racism in them as people have to depend upon other races and can no longer hide behind any racist pre-conceptions.[/li][li]The American South and several areas of the urban Midwest and Northeast (Chicago and Boston being the two most prominent examples) remain among the most racist in country.[/li][li]Younger generations are less racist than older ones - Baby Boomers are probably the last large racist demographic in the United States.[/li][/ol]
That’s not a scientific observation, but one based upon personal experience.
How to discrimination between good and bad guests.
I never said it excuses racism. To be clear, I do not think it excuses racism at all.
Most crimes are not planned, and are committed by idiots. But arguing about whether guests could be violent criminals misses the point. Hosts have the right to choose who they want as guests, and if they are not selecting black people, then some hosts are obviously discriminating between guests for some reason. I guessed comfort or safety. If you don’t think that’s the case, then I would like to hear your theory.
There are 1000 other clues if you know to look for them. If you don’t, or no one taught you how to look, then all you have is appearance and your intuition.
You don’t decide whether or not a person is dangerous/weird/discomforting before you meet them? Really? This is of no concern to you whatsoever?
I think this is a legitimate concern and people make this judgment all the time.
When discrimination became uncool, and people started noticing racial demographics for college admissions, colleges started to aim for diversity in their admissions. If Airbnb publishes racial statistics for Hosts so that everyone can see the demographics of their guests, then maybe Hosts will try and diversify as well. Just a thought about something that might happen.
Tofu and inscrutability.
Yes, but everyone has that problem. It’s not unique to racists, nor is it something that is easier solved by being a racist.
But they don’t really. The law is a bit behind the times on this, but once you become a business, you can’t discriminate on those bases. Nobody would be cool with Hilton rejecting minorities based on race, so I don’t think it’s for Joe AirBnB to do that either.
It may be perceived comfort/safety, but not something that is based on anything empirical or rational.
I can’t think of any opportunity or reason I would have to do that. What situations do you find yourself judging a person’s honesty, disposition, or character before you meet them?
Maybe, but you said:
Why would “reverse racism”, which in this case would be discriminating against White people (I guess), be cool, make one look good, or be likely to ever happen given the user base of AirBnB? The supposition just makes no sense to me.
I think in many cases, the rejecters may not even fully realize that they are making decisions based on race (assuming that is what happened). They probably rationalize to themselves that it isn’t a good week, or they don’t want to deal with the hassel, or whatever. Race probably doesn’t ever enter their consciousness.
Anyway, I see a business opportunity in this.
I think part of the reason issues like this come up is because more often than not people of privlege (ie White People) are “colorblind”. When you yourself have never dealt with the more subtle, insidious kinds of racism, particularly dogwhistle racism, your perspective is skewed. You think the only real racist situations are ones in which the racism is super blatant and obvious. From talking to people of color, I find that this is not only rare, but presents a line of thinking that compels the complainer to ‘prove’ people were acting racist torwards him.
I was guilty of this with my wife back when we were dating. She once told me a story about how she went to a store to buy a prom dress, but felt the lady at the store was racist toward her. Nothing she said happening could explicitly be proven to be out of racism, but since my wife had been on the receiving end of it, she obviously knew what it was more than someone like me who had not. She called me out on my unsympathetic response, and I apologized for jumping to conclusions. I admitted that in hindsight, I wasn’t in her shoes and couldn’t be the judge of what really happened. Its a similar problem to victim-blaming rape victims by compelling them to validate all their actions and prove the intention of the agressor.
More often than not, when a person of color complains about being the victim of prejudice, their complaints get dismissed. Its as though the racist person has to be wearing a white hood and beating the person of color up with a flaming cross just to convince other people that they were the victim of racism. People act like they are being so ‘logical’ or ‘rational’ by trying to explain away why the Mean White Person acted the way they did, rather than simply taking the person’s complaints at face value. And people tripping over themselves to try and avoid coming off as racist comes off as condescending and insincere.
Maybe it was a coincedence this person got turned down 4 times in a row, or maybe it was racism. One thing I learned is that the only people that tend to be very honest and ‘own’ their racism tend to be the most bigoted and unapologetic extreme individuals. But like others have said, there’s a continuum of racism, and its also possible that some of these renters saw the person was black and figured, “nah, don’t feel comfortable with a black guy’s ass on my couch”. Then they made the excuse of “sorry, schedule conflict”. And this brings me to another pet peeve-
People complaining about how they have to always go out of their way to be PC and avoid being racist tend to worry far more on being perceived as a racist rather than, Og forbid, treating someone different than them as second-class citizens. Their concern is wholly self-serving and vain and has nothing to do with trying to treat everybody equally. That’s why I’d rather people be more honest about being racist than trying to either act clueless about the concept of racism or act condescending about it.
I want to add that I suspect the person involved was subject to racism. But I think a lot of racists, especially progressive ones, have some pretty serious rationalization going on.