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Is the shared economy racist?

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Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#121

Post by tw268 »

theorique wrote: post #53
afterburner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are also more racist than normal when their assets are on the line (aka paranoia).

There are financial consequences for getting this one wrong. Research shows that if a neighborhood is "becoming more black" or "becoming more white", that has implications for property valuation. (Yes, this comes from racism, in case you were wondering.) Who wants to be the guinea pig to wager the value of his house on diversity? (... and it's fine if you do , just be aware that it has implications)

Property values could be tracking some other changing variable, like crime rates.

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#122

Post by theorique »

afterburner wrote: post #84
theorique wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are financial consequences for getting this one wrong. Research shows that if a neighborhood is "becoming more black" or "becoming more white", that has implications for property valuation. (Yes, this comes from racism, in case you were wondering.) Who wants to be the guinea pig to wager the value of his house on diversity? (... and it's fine if you do , just be aware that it has implications)

Yes, I suppose one always want to skew towards the richer in these cases, and race happens to be a commonly held indicator of wealth or lack thereof. It's two ugly things mixing together.

There exists a win-win equilibrium for upper class people.

It's an advantage for wealthy, educated blacks to live in mostly white neighborhoods, because it shows that they've "made it" according to the (admittedly racist) standards of success.

And it's an advantage for the white majority in such a neighborhood to have a few blacks around to demonstrate how incredibly non-racist they are.

(Obviously, the underclass (of whatever race) gets left out to dry.)

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#123

Post by rayiner »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #61
rayiner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Friedman, but this is one of his more hand-wavey arguments. It ignores the fact that discrimination might be a positive marketing characteristic for a business. If the customers are themselves racist, a business might lose a lot more revenue by serving minority customers than it gains from those customers. Indeed, even if all the business owners are not racist, as long as most of the customers are, they face a…

Do you think that many Americans (outside of the hardcore) are racist enough to literally boycott a business that doesn't refuse to do business with blacks?

I think in 1950, enough Americans were racist enough that many they'd simply head to a different neighborhood restaurant if a particular business had an appreciable number of black patrons. Maybe that's generous: in the 1950's the majority of Americans in many states were racist enough to try and ban interracial marriage...

Without the federal crackdown on discrimination in the 1950's and 1960's, housing, employment, public places, education, marriage, etc, would have remained segregated. In the background of that segregation, how long do you think it would have taken to get from "typical American circa 1950" to "typical American circa 2014?" Laws create social norms, and laws banning discrimination allowed a couple of generations of Americans to grow up in an at least somewhat integrated world, which led to the America of today where you can see people boycotting a business for serving blacks as something difficult to believe.

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#124

Post by here »

This strikes me as naturally similar to many human marketplaces, such as craigslist roommates, hiring practices, where to go grab a drink -- which have long been reflective of similar biases. In my anecdotal experience, the scales on airbnb/couchsurf/craigslist roommates/similar are even further tipped in a sexist? manner, dramatically favoring females.

There is little surprising or special about the sharing economy resonating these patterns. However, It does provide an excellent venue for study and potentially creative mitigation.

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#125

Post by richardjordan »

ggchappell wrote: post #100
richardjordan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can anyone possibly believe this? Not just attacking you but genuinely I find this incomprehensible. America is a deeply racist society. It's built on the genocide of the Native Americans who are still largely kept in poverty in virtual prison camps we insultingly call reservations, by racist policies. The legacy of racism against African Americans is still deep and real - have you any experience as a black perso…

Yes, there is racism in America. No, I have largely not been on the receiving end of it. But I can see that African Americans often have a tough time here. I can also see the plight of Koreans in Japan, and Muslims in much of India, and Turks in Germany, and Kurds in Iraq, even though I am not part of any of those groups, either. Racism is everywhere. All of it is disgusting, some of it is horrifying, and much of it…

Those examples are somewhat extreme and don't support the premise that the US is the least racist society anywhere. You also need to separate out complicated ethnic conflicts that are largely geopolitical in nature than racist in a conventional sense.

Also muslims in India isn't racism it's inter-religious conflict which is a fundamentally different thing.

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#126

Post by richardjordan »

justin66 wrote: post #83
richardjordan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having grown up in the UK, lived in many countries around the world, and now been in the US for 15 years I dispute that. To fight anecdote with anecdote... Moving from the UK to the US I was shocked by the pernicious levels of institutionalized racism and the undercurrent of subtle racism. It's everywhere. There's certainly more of a veneer of tolerance here, which covers up a deep seated pathological racism, which i…

> What you do get a lot in Europe is a lot of discomfort with the muslim minorities - whether white, or of color - which is often falsely equated with racism (because racists are often also Islamophobic too). Europe has had at least one genocide over the issue recently. That's a bit more than "discomfort."

If you're referring to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, a conflict I was actually present for the start of interestingly, then that's a whole different issue and far more complicated.

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#127

Post by natrius »

omonra wrote: post #99

I think the headline is a bit misleading. Racist would mean that hosts don't want to rent their apartment to people of other races (ie whites only wanting to rent to other whites). Here it seems that hosts are making a judgement call about the renter and using race as a parameter. They appear to have no problem renting to Asians or Indians, just have an issue with one particular ethnicity. Wouldn't a more accurate he…

No one limits their usage of "racist" to the scenario you described, so that's not what it means. Your situation is racial supremacy, which is a special kind of racist.

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#128

Post by Aloisius »

Doesn't the digital sharing economy actually make bigotry incredibly easy to detect and verify?

All you have to do is try booking the same place on a different dates (assuming you have an account in good standing/positive reviews/etc). If they keep rejecting you, then not only are you sure you have a bigot on your hand, you have a paper trail with enough proof to go after them with a lawyer.

This is something that isn't even possible in other environments (like say, cabs that just conveniently don't see you standing there hailing them). If anything, the digital sharing economy can be a huge help to fighting bigotry.

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#129

Post by tw268 »

jsonne wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #7

There'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…

"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." Just to clarify Milton Friedman (A champion of free market economics) readily acknowledges racism. His argument is more along the lines of "in the long term racist businesses wil…

Free markets should only reduce irrational discrimination based on race. If discrimination helps your business, it is rational, and will continue.

For example, if 5% of blue people trash your house, and you can't distinguish the 5% from the 95% easily, it may be rational/profitable to discriminate against blue people.

Re: Is the shared economy racist?

#130

Post by learc83 »

jfc wrote: post #76
learc83 wrote: post #30

This isn't limited to white hosts either. My brother stayed with a black couple during an internship in DC last summer (he's white). They told him that after several bad experiences they no longer host black guests.

What do you suppose they hoped to convey to your brother with that statement? It's quite possible that their experience with black guests was negative. But by telling your brother of those negative experiences (which he had no need to know), weren't they, at least in some sense, effectively differentiating themselves from another, negative category of blacks?

> which he had no need to know

They told him this after he was there for a while and got to know them, and he said it came up in normal conversation.

I suppose they could have been trying to differentiate themselves, or, they could have been attempting to bond with him over their (perceived on my brother's part) mutual dislike of lower class black people.

But given the situation, I think it's more likely that they had no ulterior motive. They had a few bad experiences with black guests, and decided to use race as a heuristic for determining suitability as a guest.

This is how nearly all racism starts, it's unfair and we should strive to eliminate it, but people are always going to make generalizations.

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