*Airbnb is back in the news and guess what? It’s for the same reason they are usually in the news: some a-hole host is discriminating against someone black … again.
In this particular case, Meshach Cisero and his friends were called a monkey by a NYC area Airbnb host who is not white, but an Asian female.
Via Twitter, Cisero explained that he and his friends expelled from the Airbnb facility around 2:30 in the morning. He goes on to accuse her of racial profiling and on top of that, she referred to them as criminals and monkeys and said she felt threatened.
*WATCH THIS AND SHARE PLEASE*
My friends were profiled, called monkeys nd kicked out of a NYC @Airbnb at 2am last night. The video captures the racial epithets, but not the fullness of her bigotry. I’m livid.
Help by sharing and tagging @Airbnb
POC and Video: @mcisero24 pic.twitter.com/ftuy9odg9x
— Brandon Pérez (@Bpereztalks) June 1, 2019
If you’re wondering what happened … what was Airbnb’s response, here’s what they told Cisero:
“We’re so sorry to hear this, Airbnb does not condone discrimination in any way. You can view our Anti-Discriminatory Policy here, https://abnb.do/6010EW8Ys . We’d like to follow up on this, could you please send us a DM providing additional information? Thank you.”
Hmm, doesn’t sound like Cisero is gonna get much satisfaction from Airbnb to us, which is a lesson to all of us as well.
But as we alluded to up top, this is far from the first time an Airbnb host has shown their true colors to people of color. A recent high profile racial incident happened in April of 2018 when police confronted Donisha Prendergast, the granddaughter of Bob Marley, and her two friends while leaving an Airbnb home in California. Neighbors of the Airbnb host who had rented a house to Prendergast and her friends called the cops on them.
REGINA HALL REFUSED TO MOCK WHITNEY HOUSTON’S DRUG USE IN ‘BLACK MONDAY’ SITCOM
Wow @Airbnb! @mcisero24 this is terrible bro and I’m sorry y’all had to experience this in NYC! pic.twitter.com/cpLSnOaZ3s
— David J. Lewis (@deelew06) June 1, 2019
Here’s more on the issue via NewsOne:
In 2017, the NAACP partnered with the company to recruit Black hosts, increase workplace diversity and create economic opportunities for communities of color. In addition, AirBnB created a damage control method that involves a policy amendment that prohibits rental hosts from seeing the photos of potential guests until after they have accepted a booking. Essentially, the policy will dissuade against hosts being able to learn the race of guests from their photos when considering bookings. In this way, the rule will encourage colorblind decisions about who will rent homes.
The previous policy allowed rental hosts to ask for guest photos as identification before closing a rental contract or accepting a booking. Hosts were able to view guest photos as a prerequisite to finalizing a booking.
Guests are not required to share photos of themselves as part of the online home-sharing site’s policies. But now, hosts have the option to ask for photos only after they make rental agreements.
“We have listened to our community, and while most guests provide a photo, some guests told us they don’t want to share a picture of themselves when booking,” the San Francisco-based online home-sharing company said in a news release on Monday. “We also recognize that concerns have been raised about the potential for photos to be misused in a way that violates our nondiscrimination policy.”
