How Airbnb got blindsided by racists

By Jason Lim

Remember several months back when there was an enlightening little tidbit that went viral about the new sharing economy? It went something like how "Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.”

Unfortunately, the new enlightenment ran head-on into some old enlightenment that goes something like, “People are people.” Which means that people can be wonderful, but they can also suck.

Like that Airbnb host in North Carolina who spewed racist, hateful comments at a black man who had booked a stay in his home, threatening to cancel the reservation because he (the host) “hated n*****s,” kindly explaining that “This is the South darling.” Well, it’s also 2016, so Airbnb rightfully banned the jerk from using its services ever again.

But racism is not so blatant all the time. According to an article in Fusion, “Black Airbnb users have been complaining for years about their troubles booking accommodations through the site, saying that white friends are able to book the same homes that reject them. One black user filed a lawsuit against the company last month for violating the Civil Rights and Fair Housing Acts. A study out of Harvard last year offered empirical proof of the trend, finding that users with black-sounding names were 16% less likely to be accepted when trying to book an Airbnb rental.”

Fusion goes on to diagnose that, “These issues are an ugly reminder of just how much prejudice remains in modern society, and a cautionary tale about what happens when you build a user-to-user marketplace that, inevitably, will bring these prejudices to light.”

So, I have two questions. One, how did Airbnb not see this coming? Two, how does a technology platform company fix what is an ingrained social, cultural and even biological prejudice?

One, Airbnb did not see this coming because of what is termed the “Design of Omission.” As explained by diversity expert Byron Kunisawa, organizations have traditionally been designed without consideration for a group’s existence as potential participants. For example, police and fire departments never considered women as potential police officers and firefighters, thus all institutional requirements for participation, from facilities to qualifications, were generated from male characteristics.

Design of Omission in Airbnb is a direct result of the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley. According to the latest figures from PBS, “Analysis of employees at the leading tech firms that report such figures reveals, on average, 71 percent are men, 29 percent are women, 60 percent identify as white, 23 percent Asian, 8 percent Latino, and 7 percent black.”

And out of those, I am willing to bet the blacks account for far less than 7% when it comes to requirements gathering and solution design teams. Then, is it any wonder why Airbnb was blindsided by the racists among us?

Airbnb can counter this through a Design of Inclusion to ensure that all employees and their abilities are accessible and processes are created to be inclusive as to not deliberately or inadvertently exclude anyone from fully participating. As a result, a multicultural and multi-demographic perspective by those participating in their formulation will lead to better, more holistic solutions on the ground floor.

Two, you can mitigate the effect of racism in economic sharing platforms like Airbnb by acknowledging that people are people and won’t change despite whatever social shaming and moral indignations you subject them to. And these technology platform companies can’t enforce an Affirmative Acton type of solution since no one has the right to tell someone that they have to use their personal property in certain ways in a sharing economy. However, although you can’t shame people to change their minds, you can always pay them to at least change their behaviors.

In other words, make a business case for diversity by turning it into dollars and sense. Whether they are car owners for Uber or home owners for Airbnb, you can incentivize them with lower commission costs, preferential referrals, better product placements, and a whole host of other goodies for those who have higher “diversity” points, however you want to define that metric. At the same time, crunch Big Data to map out patterns that can tell who’s discriminating against certain groups and start penalizing them for such behaviors.

In fact, make diversity a core baseline metric for potential customers to gauge when determining where to stay. I would feel much more comfortable staying at a place with a higher diversity score since that would translate into a friendlier, safer environment for me and my family. After all, who would want to spend money to stay at a place that doesn’t want you anyway?

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert

on innovation, leadership and organizational

culture. He has been writing for The Korea

Times since 2006. Reach him at

jasonlim@msn.com, facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes

or @jasonlim2012.