A 2015 study by researchers at Harvard Business School found evidence of “widespread discrimination against African-American guests” by Airbnb hosts, and many black Twitter users have begun sharing their experiences of rejection on the short-term rental platform using the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack.
For many, Airbnb serves as a functional equivalent to a hotel, but the startup – and other similar internet marketplaces – exist in a grey area, potentially beyond the reach of the hard-won reforms of the civil rights movement.
“Even though the intent [of the law] is there,” Veena Dubal, a professor of law at the University of California, Hastings says, it’s difficult to make 20th century statutes apply to 21st century corporations, which use “creative corporate structuring to evade the law’s protections, so that you’re back in an exploitative place that existed before the laws were written.”
One solution to the legal quandary would be to consider Airbnb itself as a public accommodation, rather than as a conduit for two million individual public accommodations. The US attorney general could then bring an enforcement action against Airbnb under Title II, Leong says, or black Airbnb users could attempt to bring a class action suit against the company.
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“Overall, we find widespread discrimination against African-American guests. Specifically, African-American guests received a positive response roughly 42% of the time, compared to roughly 50% for White guests. This 8 percentage point (roughly 16%) penalty for African-American guests is particularly noteworthy when compared to the discrimination-free setting of competing short-term accommodation platforms such as Expedia. The penalty is consistent with the racial gap found in contexts ranging from labor markets to online lending to classified ads to taxicabs.
“On the whole, we find that results are remarkably persistent. Both African-American and White hosts discriminate against African-American guests; both male and female hosts discriminate; both male and female African-American guests are discriminated against. Effects persist both for hosts that offer an entire property and for hosts who share the property with guests. Discrimination persists among experienced hosts, including those with multiple properties and those with many reviews. Discrimination persists and is of similar magnitude in high and low priced units, in diverse and homogeneous neighborhoods.”
