Airbnb, the rapidly growing peer-to-peer home sharing platform, has recently landed in hot water as users have accused hosts of racially profiling guests. Airbnb allows users to find accommodations based on location, price, size, amenities, and other various factors-spaces range from a couch in a host's living room to a van with a view of the New York City skyline to centuries-old castles. Users are required to use their full names in order to reserve a space; additionally, while it is not mandatory, having a profile picture is "highly recommended" by the site.
Unfortunately, this relatively bare bones profile has provided hosts with enough information to prohibit renters who are deemed "undesirable" as a result of their race, gender, or age. According to one Harvard Business School study, "requests from guests with distinctively African-American names are roughly 16% less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively white names." Likewise, black hosts are forced to rent out their homes for 12 percent less than white hosts. Guests likely operate under the influence of age old stereotypes that are deeply embedded in American society-that black Americans are rowdy, dangerous, criminals. The implicit bias that all individuals have color their interactions with others; while white hosts or users may not think that they are being discriminatory, or may not actively search for white-owned homes to rent, they subconsciously move away from certain options because of their discomfort.
After a lawsuit, the company has taken several steps in an attempt to stave off the aforementioned discrimination. First, should a host tell a user that the space is unavailable for the requested time, that slot is automatically frozen, forbidding the host from renting to another user. Airbnb's next step, however, primarily targets their own staff. The company has announced that it will be making an effort to both provide anti-bias trainings to employees in addition to diversifying current staff, going so far as to form a partnership "with historically black colleges and universities to strengthen their recruitment pipeline." Whether these steps will be enough, only time will tell.
While it is important to criticize Airbnb's actions as reactionary rather than preventative, diversity is a pervasive issue in Silicon Valley. Google, despite its tremendous power and prestige, has only recently confronted this issue as well. In total, nearly 70 percent of Google's workers are men, and 60 percent of Google's workers are white-their black employees total less than 2 percent of Google's entire workforce. Many tech companies skirt around the issues by stating that they hire solely on a meritocratic basis, yet this view fails to take into account the differences in socioeconomic status among different racial groups in the United States. Only by actively seeking to create a more diverse workforce can these companies begin to move towards a more sustainable solution to their discrimination problem.
