Luc Van Damme was two when taken from his Rwandan mother under a colonial ban on mixed families.
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Intro Video
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
University student charged with hate crime after hanging noose in dorm elevator
A 19-year-old University of Illinois student is facing a felony hate crime charge after he was accused of hanging a noose in an elevator inside a residence hall on campus.
—Black student enrollment in Illinois colleges and universities on the decline—
A woman who reportedly was with Andrew Smith, reported seeing the student handle the noose.
Smith, a sophomore, was arrested and charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and committing a hate crime, a felony for allegedly committing the racist act, Yahoo reports.
“Our mission at the University Police Department is to maintain a safe and secure environment where our campus community members feel supported and successful,” said Chief of Police Craig Stone, who is also Executive Director of Public Safety.
“We do not tolerate incidents that are perceived by others to be a threat to their safety, and we will always respond quickly to identify offenders and hold them accountable for those actions.”
Smith was released on $5,000 bond after pleading not guilty. He is expected back in court Oct. 22.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, denounced the hateful act.
“I’m committed to fighting intolerance and bigotry everywhere in our state and building a culture of learning at our universities that serves all students,” Pritzker said on Twitter Tuesday. “Hate has no place in Illinois or in its educational institutions, and I’m glad swift action was taken to address this incident.”
—Indianapolis Metropolitan Police cop suspended without pay for punching student—
The university has been under fire for alleged racial harassment as noted in a federal lawsuit filed by three Black employees earlier this year.
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MIT report examines how to make technology work for society
Automation is not likely to eliminate millions of jobs any time soon — but the U.S. still needs vastly improved policies if Americans are to build better careers and share prosperity as technological changes occur, according to a new MIT report about the workplace.
The report, which represents the initial findings of MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future, punctures some conventional wisdom and builds a nuanced picture of the evolution of technology and jobs, the subject of much fraught public discussion.
The likelihood of robots, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) wiping out huge sectors of the workforce in the near future is exaggerated, the task force concludes — but there is reason for concern about the impact of new technology on the labor market. In recent decades, technology has contributed to the polarization of employment, disproportionately helping high-skilled professionals while reducing opportunities for many other workers, and new technologies could exacerbate this trend.
Moreover, the report emphasizes, at a time of historic income inequality, a critical challenge is not necessarily a lack of jobs, but the low quality of many jobs and the resulting lack of viable careers for many people, particularly workers without college degrees. With this in mind, the work of the future can be shaped beneficially by new policies, renewed support for labor, and reformed institutions, not just new technologies. Broadly, the task force concludes, capitalism in the U.S. must address the interests of workers as well as shareholders.
“At MIT, we are inspired by the idea that technology can be a force for good. But if as a nation we want to make sure that today’s new technologies evolve in ways that help build a healthier, more equitable society, we need to move quickly to develop and implement strong, enlightened policy responses,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif, who called for the creation of the Task Force on the Work of the Future in 2017.
“Fortunately, the harsh societal consequences that concern us all are not inevitable,” Reif adds. “Technologies embody the values of those who make them, and the policies we build around them can profoundly shape their impact. Whether the outcome is inclusive or exclusive, fair or laissez-faire, is therefore up to all of us. I am deeply grateful to the task force members for their latest findings and their ongoing efforts to pave an upward path.”
“There is a lot of alarmist rhetoric about how the robots are coming,” adds Elisabeth Beck Reynolds, executive director of the task force, as well as executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center. “MIT’s job is to cut through some of this hype and bring some perspective to this discussion.”
Reynolds also calls the task force’s interest in new policy directions “classically American in its willingness to consider innovation and experimentation.”
Anxiety and inequality
The core of the task force consists of a group of MIT scholars. Its research has drawn upon new data, expert knowledge of many technology sectors, and a close analysis of both technology-centered firms and economic data spanning the postwar era.
The report addresses several workplace complexities. Unemployment in the U.S. is low, yet workers have considerable anxiety, from multiple sources. One is technology: A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 65 to 90 percent of respondents in industrialized countries think computers and robots will take over many jobs done by humans, while less than a third think better-paying jobs will result from these technologies.
Another concern for workers is income stagnation: Adjusted for inflation, 92 percent of Americans born in 1940 earned more money than their parents, but only about half of people born in 1980 can say that.
“The persistent growth in the quantity of jobs has not been matched by an equivalent growth in job quality,” the task force report states.
Applications of technology have fed inequality in recent decades. High-tech innovations have displaced “middle-skilled” workers who perform routine tasks, from office assistants to assembly-line workers, but these innovations have complemented the activities of many white-collar workers in medicine, science and engineering, finance, and other fields. Technology has also not displaced lower-skilled service workers, leading to a polarized workforce. Higher-skill and lower-skill jobs have grown, middle-skill jobs have shrunk, and increased earnings have been concentrated among white-collar workers.
“Technological advances did deliver productivity growth over the last four decades,” the report states. “But productivity growth did not translate into shared prosperity.”
Indeed, says David Autor, who is the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, associate head of MIT’s Department of Economics, and a co-chair of the task force, “We think people are pessimistic because they’re on to something. Although there’s no shortage of jobs, the gains have been so unequally distributed that most people have not benefited much. If the next four decades of automation are going to look like the last four decades, people have reason to worry.”
Productive innovations versus “so-so technology”
A big question, then, is what the next decades of automation have in store. As the report explains, some technological innovations are broadly productive, while others are merely “so-so technologies” — a term coined by economists Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University to describe technologies that replace workers without markedly improving services or increasing productivity.
For instance, electricity and light bulbs were broadly productive, allowing the expansion of other types of work. But automated technology allowing for self-check-out at pharmacies or supermarkets merely replaces workers without notably increasing efficiency for the customer or productivity.
“That’s a strong labor-displacing technology, but it has very modest productivity value,” Autor says of these automated systems. “That’s a ‘so-so technology.’ The digital era has had fabulous technologies for skill complementarity [for white-collar workers], but so-so technologies for everybody else. Not all innovations that raise productivity displace workers, and not all innovations that displace workers do much for productivity.”
Several forces have contributed to this skew, according to the report. “Computers and the internet enabled a digitalization of work that made highly educated workers more productive and made less-educated workers easier to replace with machinery,” the authors write.
Given the mixed record of the last four decades, does the advent of robotics and AI herald a brighter future, or a darker one? The task force suggests the answer depends on how humans shape that future. New and emerging technologies will raise aggregate economic output and boost wealth, and offer people the potential for higher living standards, better working conditions, greater economic security, and improved health and longevity. But whether society realizes this potential, the report notes, depends critically on the institutions that transform aggregate wealth into greater shared prosperity instead of rising inequality.
One thing the task force does not foresee is a future where human expertise, judgment, and creativity are less essential than they are today.
“Recent history shows that key advances in workplace robotics — those that radically increase productivity — depend on breakthroughs in work design that often take years or even decades to achieve,” the report states.
As robots gain flexibility and situational adaptability, they will certainly take over a larger set of tasks in warehouses, hospitals, and retail stores — such as lifting, stocking, transporting, cleaning, as well as awkward physical tasks that require picking, harvesting, stooping, or crouching.
The task force members believe such advances in robotics will displace relatively low-paid human tasks and boost the productivity of workers, whose attention will be freed to focus on higher-value-added work. The pace at which these tasks are delegated to machines will be hastened by slowing growth, tight labor markets, and the rapid aging of workforces in most industrialized countries, including the U.S.
And while machine learning — image classification, real-time analytics, data forecasting, and more — has improved, it may just alter jobs, not eliminate them: Radiologists do much more than interpret X-rays, for instance. The task force also observes that developers of autonomous vehicles, another hot media topic, have been “ratcheting back” their timelines and ambitions over the last year.
“The recent reset of expectations on driverless cars is a leading indicator for other types of AI-enabled systems as well,” says David A. Mindell, co-chair of the task force, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, and the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing at MIT. “These technologies hold great promise, but it takes time to understand the optimal combination of people and machines. And the timing of adoption is crucial for understanding the impact on workers.”
Policy proposals for the future
Still, if the worst-case scenario of a “job apocalypse” is unlikely, the continued deployment of so-so technologies could make the future of work worse for many people.
If people are worried that technologies could limit opportunity, social mobility, and shared prosperity, the report states, “Economic history confirms that this sentiment is neither ill-informed nor misguided. There is ample reason for concern about whether technological advances will improve or erode employment and earnings prospects for the bulk of the workforce.”
At the same time, the task force report finds reason for “tempered optimism,” asserting that better policies can significantly improve tomorrow’s work.
“Technology is a human product,” Mindell says. “We shape technological change through our choices of investments, incentives, cultural values, and political objectives.”
To this end, the task force focuses on a few key policy areas. One is renewed investment in postsecondary workforce education outside of the four-year college system — and not just in the STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, math) but reading, writing, and the “social skills” of teamwork and judgment.
Community colleges are the biggest training providers in the country, with 12 million for-credit and non-credit students, and are a natural location for bolstering workforce education. A wide range of new models for gaining educational credentials is also emerging, the task force notes. The report also emphasizes the value of multiple types of on-the-job training programs for workers.
However, the report cautions, investments in education may be necessary but not sufficient for workers: “Hoping that ‘if we skill them, jobs will come,’ is an inadequate foundation for constructing a more productive and economically secure labor market.”
More broadly, therefore, the report argues that the interests of capital and labor need to be rebalanced. The U.S., it notes, “is unique among market economies in venerating pure shareholder capitalism,” even though workers and communities are business stakeholders too.
“Within this paradigm [of pure shareholder capitalism], the personal, social, and public costs of layoffs and plant closings should not play a critical role in firm decision-making,” the report states.
The task force recommends greater recognition of workers as stakeholders in corporate decision making. Redressing the decades-long erosion of worker bargaining power will require new institutions that bend the arc of innovation toward making workers more productive rather than less necessary. The report holds that the adversarial system of collective bargaining, enshrined in U.S. labor law adopted during the Great Depression, is overdue for reform.
The U.S. tax code can be altered to help workers as well. Right now, it favors investments in capital rather than labor — for instance, capital depreciation can be written off, and R&D investment receives a tax credit, whereas investments in workers produce no such equivalent benefits. The task force recommends new tax policy that would also incentivize investments in human capital, through training programs, for instance.
Additionally, the task force recommends restoring support for R&D to past levels and rebuilding U.S. leadership in the development of new AI-related technologies, “not merely to win but to lead innovation in directions that will benefit the nation: complementing workers, boosting productivity, and strengthening the economic foundation for shared prosperity.”
Ultimately the task force’s goal is to encourage investment in technologies that improve productivity, and to ensure that workers share in the prosperity that could result.
“There’s no question technological progress that raises productivity creates opportunity,” Autor says. “It expands the set of possibilities that you can realize. But it doesn’t guarantee that you will make good choices.”
Reynolds adds: “The question for firms going forward is: How are they going to improve their productivity in ways that can lead to greater quality and efficiency, and aren’t just about cutting costs and bringing in marginally better technology?”
Further research and analyses
In addition to Reynolds, Autor, and Mindell, the central group within MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future consists of 18 MIT professors representing all five Institute schools. Additionally, the project has a 22-person advisory board drawn from the ranks of industry leaders, former government officials, and academia; a 14-person research board of scholars; and eight graduate students. The task force also counsulted with business executives, labor leaders, and community college leaders, among others.
The task force follows other influential MIT projects such as the Commission on Industrial Productivity, an intensive multiyear study of U.S. industry in the 1980s. That effort resulted in the widely read book, “Made in America,” as well as the creation of MIT’s Industrial Performance Center.
The current task force taps into MIT’s depth of knowledge across a full range of technologies, as well as its strengths in the social sciences.
“MIT is engaged in developing frontier technology,” Reynolds says. “Not necessarily what will be introduced tomorrow, but five, 10, or 25 years from now. We do see what’s on the horizon, and our researchers want to bring realism and context to the public discourse.”
The current report is an interim finding from the task force; the group plans to conduct additional research over the next year, and then will issue a final version of the report.
“What we’re trying to do with this work,” Reynolds concludes, “is to provide a holistic perspective, which is not just about the labor market and not just about technology, but brings it all together, for a more rational and productive discussion in the public sphere.”
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Oprah Winfrey launching wellness arena tour in early 2020
Oprah Winfrey is taking her motivational spirit on the road early next year with an arena tour to promote a healthier lifestyle.
The former talk-show host and OWN television network chief announced Wednesday that the “Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus” tour will begin Jan. 4 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She is working in conjunction with Weight Watchers Reimagined to offer a full-day of wellness conversations during the nine-city tour.
The tour will conclude in Denver on March 7. She will also make stops in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Atlanta; Dallas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Brooklyn, New York; and St. Paul, Minnesota.
It’s her first national tour in five years. She has been to Canada and Australia more recently.
Along with high-profile guests, Winfrey said she wants to empower audiences to tap into their potential. The names of her guests will be released at a later date.
“What I know for sure is we can all come together to support a stronger, healthier, more abundant life — focused on what makes us feel energized, connected and empowered,” Winfrey said in a statement. “As I travel the country, my hope for this experience is to motivate others to let 2020 be the year of transformation and triumph — beginning first and foremost with what makes us well. This is the year to move forward, let’s make it happen in 2020.”
Winfrey has held other successful speaking tours, including “Oprah’s The Life You Want Weekend” in 2014. “Oprah’s Life Class” was a show.
During her upcoming tour, Winfrey will talk about her wellness journey with attendees and help develop their 2020 action plan. She will also share the latest in wellness research and interactive workbook exercises.
Each tour stop will feature Winfrey in a one-on-one interview with a celebrity guest.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for (Weight Watchers) to do what we do best: bring communities of people together with a shared goal of health and wellness,” said Mindy Grossman, president and CEO of WW (Weight Watchers Reimagined).
Over $1 million from tour proceeds will benefit Weight Watchers Good, a philanthropic area of the organization to help bring fresh and healthy food to underserved communities.
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Serena Williams dominates at US Open, clinching 100th win
Serena Williams clinched the win Tuesday night, beating out Wang Qiang 6-1. 6-0 in the Quarterfinals and securing her 100th US Open match win.
—Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka top Forbes list of highest paid female athletes—
“I never thought I would get to 100 wins and still be here but I love what I do,” she said to reporters after her match at Flushing Meadows.
Williams beat Qiang, the highest ranked player in China, effortlessly, The NY Daily News reports.
On Saturday she slipped and fell and twisted her ankle while playing Petra Martic but was feeling better.
“Tape got a little loose, so I wanted to tighten it, make sure nothing happened” she said. “Other than that, it’s feeling much better.”
“It’s been a tough year but physically I’m feeling great and more than anything I’m just having fun when I come out here.”
—What made Serena Williams stop playing in the middle of an important match?—
Williams will face off against No. 5 seed Elina Svitolina next.
She said about her upcoming competitor: “She’s had a great year,” said Williams. “She made the semis at Wimbledon and I feel she wants to go one step further, so I feel I’ll have to come out and play really well.”
Williams seeks her 24th Grand Slam title.
We are rooting for the G.O.A.T to go all the way!
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Bahamians begin rescues as Hurricane Dorian moves on toward US coast
Bahamians rescued victims of Hurricane Dorian with jet skis and a bulldozer as the U.S. Coast Guard, Britain’s Royal Navy and a handful of aid groups tried to get food and medicine to survivors and take the most desperate people to safety.
Airports were flooded and roads impassable after the most powerful storm to hit the Bahamas in recorded history parked over Abaco and Grand Bahama islands, pounding them with winds up to 185 mph (295 kph) and torrential rain before finally moving into open waters Tuesday on a course toward Florida.
People on the U.S. coast made final preparations for a storm with winds at a still-dangerous 105 mph (168 kph), making it a Category 2 storm.
At least seven deaths were reported in the Bahamas, with the full scope of the disaster still unknown.
The storm’s punishing winds and muddy brown floodwaters destroyed or severely damaged thousands of homes, crippled hospitals and trapped people in attics.
“It’s total devastation. It’s decimated. Apocalyptic,” said Lia Head-Rigby, who helps run a local hurricane relief group and flew over the Bahamas’ hard-hit Abaco Islands. “It’s not rebuilding something that was there; we have to start again.”
She said her representative on Abaco told her there were “a lot more dead,” though she had no numbers as bodies being gathered.
The Bahamas’ prime minister also expected more deaths and predicted that rebuilding would require “a massive, coordinated effort.”
“We are in the midst of one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said at a news conference. “No effort or resources will be held back.”
Five Coast Guard helicopters ran near-hourly flights to the stricken Abaco, flying more than 20 injured people to the capital’s main hospital. British sailors were also rushing in aid. A few private aid groups also tried to reach the battered islands in the northern Bahamas.
“We don’t want people thinking we’ve forgotten them. … We know what your conditions are,” Tammy Mitchell of the Bahamas’ National Emergency Management Agency told ZNS Bahamas radio station.
With their heads bowed against heavy wind and rain, rescuers began evacuating people from the storm’s aftermath across Grand Bahama island late Tuesday, using jet skis, boats and even a huge bulldozer that cradled children and adults in its digger as it churned through deep waters and carried them to safety.
One rescuer gently scooped up an elderly man in his arms and walked toward a pickup truck waiting to evacuate him and others to higher ground.
Over 2 million people along the coast in Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina were warned to evacuate. While the threat of a direct hit on Florida had all but evaporated, Dorian was expected to pass dangerously close to Georgia and South Carolina — and perhaps strike North Carolina — on Thursday or Friday. The hurricane’s eye passed to the east of Cape Canaveral, Florida, early Wednesday.
Even if landfall does not occur, the system is likely to cause storm surge and severe flooding, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
“Don’t tough it out. Get out,” said U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency official Carlos Castillo.
In the Bahamas, Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane said more than 13,000 houses, or about 45% of the homes on Grand Bahama and Abaco, were believed to be severely damaged or destroyed. U.N. officials said more than 60,000 people on the hard-hit islands will need food, and the Red Cross said some 62,000 will need clean drinking water.
“What we are hearing lends credence to the fact that this has been a catastrophic storm and a catastrophic impact,” Cochrane said.
Lawson Bates, a staffer for Arkansas-based MedicCorps, flew over Abaco and said: “It looks completely flattened. There’s boats way inland that are flipped over. It’s total devastation.”
The Red Cross authorized $500,000 for the first wave of disaster relief, Cochrane said. U.N. humanitarian teams stood ready to go into the stricken areas to help assess damage and the country’s needs, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said. The U.S. government also sent a disaster response team.
Abaco and Grand Bahama islands, with a combined population of about 70,000, are known for their marinas, golf courses and all-inclusive resorts. To the south, the Bahamas’ most populous island, New Providence, which includes the capital city of Nassau and has over a quarter-million people, had little damage.
The U.S. Coast Guard airlifted at least 21 people injured on Abaco. Choppy, coffee-colored floodwaters reached roofs and the tops of palm trees.
“We will confirm what the real situation is on the ground,” Health Minister Duane Sands said. “We are hoping and praying that the loss of life is limited.”
Sands said Dorian rendered the main hospital on Grand Bahama unusable, while the hospital at Marsh Harbor on Abaco was in need of food, water, medicine and surgical supplies. He said crews were trying to fly out five to seven kidney failure patients from Abaco who had not received dialysis since Friday.
The Grand Bahama airport was under 6 feet (2 meters) of water.
Early Wednesday, Dorian was centered about 90 miles (144 kilometers) east of Daytona Beach, Florida, and it was moving north northwest at 8 mph (12 kph). Hurricane-force winds extended up to 60 miles (95 kilometers) from its center, while tropical storm-force winds could be felt up to 175 miles (280 kilometers) from the core.
The U.S. coast from north of West Palm Beach, Florida, through Georgia was expected to get 3 to 6 inches of rain, with 9 inches in places, while the Carolinas could get 5 to 10 inches and 15 in spots, the National Hurricane Center said.
Forecasters also tracked Tropical Storm Fernand as it closed in on the northeast Mexican coast south of the U.S. border, predicting landfall Wednesday and up to 18 inches of rainfall that could unleash flash floods and mudslides Wednesday below the eastern “Sierra Madre” range.
NASA satellite imagery through Monday night showed some places in the Bahamas had gotten as much as 35 inches (89 centimeters) of rain, said private meteorologist Ryan Maue.
Parliament member Iram Lewis said he feared waters would keep rising and stranded people would lose contact with officials as their cellphone batteries died.
Dorian also left one person dead in its wake in Puerto Rico before slamming into the Bahamas on Sunday. It tied the record for the strongest Atlantic storm ever to hit land, matching the Labor Day hurricane that struck Florida’s Gulf Coast in 1935, before storms were given names.
Across the Southeast, interstate highways leading away from beaches in South Carolina and Georgia were turned into one-way evacuation routes. Several airports announced closings, and hundreds of flights were canceled. Walt Disney World in Orlando closed in the afternoon, and SeaWorld shut down.
Police in coastal Savannah, Georgia, announced an overnight curfew. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper ordered a mandatory evacuation of the dangerously exposed barrier islands along the state’s entire coast.
Having seen storms swamp his home on the Georgia coast in 2016 and 2017, Joey Spalding of Tybee Island decided to empty his house and stay at a friend’s apartment nearby rather than take any chances with Dorian.
He packed a U-Haul truck with tables, chairs, a chest of drawers, tools — virtually all of his furnishings except for his mattress and a large TV — and planned to park it on higher ground. He also planned to shroud his house in plastic wrap up to shoulder height and pile sandbags in front of the doors.
“In this case, I don’t have to come into a house full of junk,” he said. “I’m learning a little as I go.”
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Niche home-sharing sites roll out welcome mat for minorities
Every few months, social media lights up with a story or viral video about discrimination in home-sharing: A host kicks out a black guest or cancels a gay couple’s booking or doesn’t respond to a Muslim woman’s inquiry.
The dominant brands — Airbnb, Booking.com and VRBO — work quickly to contain the damage. They may ban the host, find new housing for the guests and remind followers of their anti-bias policies.
But a handful of smaller competitors are trying to ease fears of discrimination by catering to specific minority groups, and this alternate approach has carved out a small but thriving piece of the home-sharing market. One executive calls the niche services “digital Green Books,” a reference to the guide that black motorists once used to find welcoming hotels and restaurants.
“There are different segments of people in the world, and we want different things,” said Hadi Shakuur, founder and CEO of Muzbnb, a home-sharing site for Muslims. He said the targeted services came about “because their values weren’t represented on the other sites.”
Misterb&b, which serves gay travelers, recently surpassed 300,000 hosts. Innclusive, which markets to people of color, says it has properties in 130 countries. Noirbnb, which caters to black travelers, has around 10,000 users. There are also home-sharing sites for Mormons, Christians and women.
Anyone is welcome to use the sites. Some hosts list on both niche sites and the bigger competitors. But the niche sites make clear that they are aiming at particular communities.
Stefan Grant started Noirbnb three years ago after neighbors called the police when he tried to check into a rental home in suburban Atlanta. Initially, he wanted the site to be a part of Airbnb specializing in black travel. Airbnb turned him down.
“We really are this market. We really do travel. We really are black,” Grant said. “If my culture has to be erased and hidden away, we all lose.”
Alternative sites say they have few problems with discrimination, but they do watch for it.
Misterb&b investigates listings that have a high number of rejections. In four years, it has kicked three users off the site for discrimination. Noirbnb has not needed to remove any users. Innclusive requires nearly all of its properties to be instantly bookable, which cuts down on hosts’ ability to discriminate.
Muzbnb, which has around 2,000 users, encourages hosts and guests to communicate before booking so all expectations are clear.
Jordan Prescott, a church musician from Baltimore and a gay man, had no problems when he booked an Airbnb for work in Cincinnati two years ago. But for a recent trip to Nice, France, he decided to use Misterb&b because he wanted a host who was knowledgeable about local gay nightlife. He said it takes some worry out of vacation planning.
“I’m really glad there’s the option,” he said.
But alternative sites don’t appeal to everyone. Elena Nikolova, who runs a blog called Muslim Travel Girl, said she likes the idea of Muzbnb and thinks it’s great for solo travelers who want a safe room in someone’s home. But she prefers Airbnb because it has so many more properties, and she’s usually renting a whole home for her family.
Nikolova said she has faced discrimination on Airbnb. She suspects one host turned her down because she wears a bright pink hijab in her profile photo. But she doesn’t think home-sharing sites should do away with photos.
“I would rather have someone’s photo to know who I am dealing with,” said Nikolova, who is based in the United Kingdom. Home-sharing companies “can have as many clauses as they want on their contracts, but that doesn’t stop what happens.”
With more than 14 million listings between them, the big home-sharing sites aren’t giving up. All three have software and staff dedicated to rooting out bias and responding to complaints.
In 2016, Airbnb instituted a nondiscrimination statement that all guests and hosts must sign. The company says it has barred more than 1 million people from the site because they refused to sign it.
Airbnb says 70% of its properties are now instantly bookable, up from 40% two years ago. And late last year, the company announced it would display a guest’s profile photo only after a property is booked. Hosts are required to post a photo.
Booking.com requires instant booking and uses artificial intelligence to detect bias in its property descriptions and reviews. VRBO, which is owned by Expedia Group, requires hosts and guests to review its inclusion statement. Neither site requires users to post photos.
All three sites say they have removed users for discriminating. But none will reveal specific numbers or say whether those numbers are rising or falling.
That lack of transparency is one reason people don’t trust home-sharing sites, said Michael Luca, a Harvard Business School professor who has studied racial discrimination at Airbnb.
“This market worked for decades to get rid of discrimination. Why let them bring it back into it?” he said. “Guests, hosts and policymakers have a right to know what’s going on on the platform.”
Some minorities have already closed the door on home-sharing.
Leslie Miley, an engineering executive in San Francisco who is black, used to rent out his Southern California vacation home on Airbnb. Guests would often show up and assume he was the gardener or property manager. He stopped using the site altogether in 2016, when he showed up to a rental home after dark and neighbors kept coming out to check on him. Now he only stays at hotels when he travels.
“It’s so difficult to characterize the feeling you have as an African American doing something like that, knowing in the back of your mind it can go south very, very quickly,” he said.
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