For weeks in a row, my friend’s attempts at booking Airbnb rooms in Copenhagen were unfruitful. It was either ‘Sorry, the room is not available during that time,’ or a similar excuse the host produced for not approving the booking. I knew affordable Airbnb rooms in popular destinations like Copenhagen can be difficult to come by. Despite the growing popularity of the home-sharing platform across the world, it’s certainly not impossible to find accommodation. You only should scroll longer through the listings to find a suitable one.
As my friend’s flat-finding woes grew, I was under the illusion that racism had nothing to do with it. Though I have had my share of rejections, I had stayed with a Chinese host in Penang, Malaysia, a bunch of Caucasian freelance journalists in Yangon, Myanmar, and with a diverse array of hosts across Germany. I don’t particularly recall any terrible racial discrimination that could have resulted in my booking being rejected. Besides, my hosts were nice enough, often sharing meals and drinks with me and making me feel extremely welcome.
As I offered to help my friend book a room, a common friend who is Danish gently nudged me into believing that racism could be the case for so many rejections. What followed next proved it. He took matters into his hand and booked a chic apartment in the city, probably his first booking request, putting an end to our misery.
And then I read about what happened to Dyne Suh, an American law student of Asian descent. Suh booked an Airbnb unit in Big Bear, California, and waddled through a snow-storm to get to her room, only to find out that her host had cancelled the reservation last-minute.
Over and above the disappointment of finding a pre-booked Airbnb cancelled by her host in the middle of the Californian mountains, Suh also was subjected to a barrage of racist text messages. “I wouldn’t rent it to u if u were the last person on earth,” her host wrote to her. “One word says it all. Asian.”
Suh decided to sue Airbnb and was duly served justice just a few weeks ago. California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing negotiated with Airbnb and directed Suh’s host to pay up $5,000 in damages and asked the host to be part of racial bias training, further ordering her to volunteer for community service and take a course on Asian-American Studies.
Now, it’s entirely naïve to think that this person will come out of the course as a renewed individual who respects racial diversity, but the silver lining is that justice is at least served in Suh’s case. Racial prejudices are perhaps easy to endure when they’re only in the form of a simple Airbnb rejection from a host. For its part, Airbnb released a report last year denouncing that, “bias, prejudice, racism, and hatred have no place on our platform or in our community”.
Suh’s case is probably only one of the many racial prejudice cases that came to global limelight because she decided to take it to the authorities. Turns out, racial prejudice in the culture of sharing economy (platforms like Airbnb and Uber) is simply unavoidable because anti-discrimination laws are not effective or enforced in various countries.
So what would you do? Would you stop booking an Airbnb room next time you travel? No, it’s not all that dismal. For every host like Suh’s, there are at least tens of others who do not racially discriminate their guests. Here’s wishing you land up in one such host’s living room, sharing stories from your part of the world. Fortunately, or otherwise, that’s the only hope you and I have as of now.
(The writer is an independent journalist who lives in Stuttgart, Germany, and often writes stories that intersect food and travel)
