Not to mention the whole socially pertinent(Trump???) legacy of entrenched discrimination in the U.S.
I'm not sure if the original story is racism. If I (white) am staying in a Chinese apartment house that otherwise only has Chinese tenants then the likelihood that someone recognizes me as a non-tenant is 100%.
Therefore, the likelihood that someone reports me as a stranger is far greater than if I were Chinese.
In other words, I'd not be surprised if someone reported me (white) while staying in a (hypothetical) Chinese AirBnB.
As far as "recognizing the problem" goes: You pretty much have to acknowledge a "problem" if something like this comes up or you'll be harassed on the Internet.
Proof: out of 6,000+ availability request made (without checking actual availability which is known, but sending a request anyway) 50% of "white sounding names" were accepted, while only 42% of "black sounding names" where accepted.
That's like 8%!!! That means people are racist!
Or it means that the randomness of actually available houses was skewed where "black sounding names" were assigned more unavailable houses.
I wonder how many times they tried this experiment to get the result they were looking for.
Also, if my neighbor saw a bunch of strangers in my house when I was away, I would want them to call the police. The problem in that particular case is not that they called the police but that the neighbours were not notified about unexpected strangers staying in the neighborhood.
If someone doesn't want me (a brown male) to stay in their house, I would absolutely like to know and would prefer to have a filter to easily find only the places that accept someone like me. The problem is not discrimination. The problem is anti-discrimination bullshit the company has to go through if they provided such a filter to make lives easy for everyone.
This breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to call names in arguments. Please (re-)read them and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Also, it would be trivial to use this brand of multiculturalism to justify open racism. Why should a Chinese person in Chinatown who doesn't speak English allow a white family to stay in their property? Or allowing a Russian to deny a Ukranian? Or allowing a black family who have been victimized by the police to allow a family containing police officers.
I imagine most SJW's would agree for "special exemptions" for these cases. The idea that no one should be turned down is asinine. These are people's homes and by the 4th Amendment the government can't shove people in them. Want to stay somewhere where they don't have these issues? Then call a hotel.