Is the shared economy racist?
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Is the shared economy racist?
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Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#2I'm not saying the shared economy is racist by design. Nor am I accusing mentioned companies as being racist. But as companies build trust through profiles and links to social networks, they should be wary of the unintended consequence.
Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#3This is pretty clearly an example of individual people being racist, not companies. Traditional taxi drivers are notoriously racist, I'm not surprised their app-summoned alternatives are any different.
Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#4I can say I've had similar experiences all across California with AirBnB.
Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#5Very interesting however they could have easily provided some more conclusive proof. The author should have tried booking one of the places that turned Brandon down on the same dates. If he had been offered the place it would haave been more clear racism was in play. I'm not denying racism was in play (although the UberX example seems quite silly - personally I'd be happy to get a driver that didn't talk to me and the one time I've used Uber the driver wasn't very talkative) but I'd like to see the author try my suggestion and follow up the post.
Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#6I'm not saying the shared economy is racist by design. Nor am I accusing mentioned companies as being racist. But as companies build trust through profiles and links to social networks, they should be wary of the unintended consequence.
since you have the time to clarify, perhaps you should update the post's title. :)
Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#7There's a really simple explanatory mechanism, which is that even if an AirBnB host is bound by the same anti-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act as a Hyatt, which is probably true, holding individual service providers accountable at that level is basically impossible. And to the extent that the "sharing economy" involves more individuals rather than businesses that can be sued, you will see more discrimination.
This issue also strikes to the heart of some of the libertarian ethos around the sharing economy generally and Uber/AirBnB in particular. People are really racist.[1] Just getting the racism to the levels experienced by Andrew's friend experienced involved a century of the federal government beating the states over the head with troops, court orders, etc. The elimination of overt racial discrimination in private businesses is actually a wonderful example of concerted government action addressing a problem that according to free market theories shouldn't even have existed in the first place.
[1] I think Americans are much less racist than almost anyone else. I'm Bengali by ethnicity, and my observation is that people on the subcontinent are racist enough to make a south Georgia redneck blush. But even then sometimes I look around at maps like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Racial_Di... (race map of Detroit with black areas in blue and white areas in red), and think we'd still have legal segregation if the courts hadn't forced it down peoples' throats.
Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#8There's a really simple explanatory mechanism, which is that even if an AirBnB host is bound by the same anti-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act as a Hyatt, which is probably true, holding individual service providers accountable at that level is basically impossible. And to the extent that the "sharing economy" involves more individuals rather than businesses that can be sued, you will see more discri…
Impossible? That's nonsense. They could ask users for a standard race descriptor that is never shared with the hosts, and if the hosts seem to predominantly reject certain races of people, the marketplace like AirBnB could kick them out. It's actually pretty simple. It all depends on how eager the marketplaces are to solve this particular problem.
Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#9I'm not saying the shared economy is racist by design. Nor am I accusing mentioned companies as being racist. But as companies build trust through profiles and links to social networks, they should be wary of the unintended consequence.
OK, but as dublinben points out, one must consider the businesses these services are meant to replace. He mentions taxicabs which are notoriously racist, do you suppose Bed and Breakfast owners might have different answers about vacancy depending on who asks?
If the goal is to observe racism as it functions in our society, cool. If the goal is guilt-driven self-flagellation about the distinction between startups' marketing copy and the reality of the situation, less cool.
Re: Is the shared economy racist?
#10This is pretty clearly an example of individual people being racist, not companies. Traditional taxi drivers are notoriously racist, I'm not surprised their app-summoned alternatives are any different.
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