Funny, that. The US is all "law and order" for all manner of crime whose root cause is poverty, and stands as the #1 most authoritarian country in the world going by the number of prisoners per capita. But somehow, punishing racism is crossing a line.

Actually, making it illegal - while not a panacea - is actually quite useful.

Well, some places are making education illegal so that is problematic too. I think the way you get rid of racism is always just via exposure. It is easy to hate group X when you don't know any X or are never in contact with them. People are always afraid of the unknown and they fill in the blanks in the worst possible way when there is no data.

This really isn’t a matter of a law, but I’ll speak to your point anyways. Laws rarely ever eliminate a problem; they also serve the purpose of punishing those who perform bad behavior.

And the (mostly) help set a social Norm for behavior

And experience is the best way to educate someone. Experiences that biased hosts might not have if they are able to select guests that meet their preconceived biases.

So you want Airbnb to run racism education classes instead of making a small UI change? Who does the educating? Why is it such a big deal to only see peoples initials? Is it just a slippery slope argument? I am confused.

America has this thing - "We are all sooo different. BUT we are all the same." It doesn't work. Growing up in the ex USSR race wasn't really a thing - though we had a number of races in our class. No one said anything, about it, ever. I didn't even realize racism is a common thing until some time into a US university. Just wasn't something I gave any thought to.

This is my subjective opinion - I know a lot of ex-USSR countries are considered pretty racist. On the other hand, in that area, EVERYONE was an indentured servant at some point, so that helps equalize things as well.

I would also argue that a lot of groups enjoy playing off of race on BOTH sides (anti and pro).

Racism is pattern matching (and can be good or bad - selecting a good bone marrow transplant donor is racist) so I’m not sure how educating will resolve it. People correctly notice trends.

I think making it illegal and socially unacceptable is the only way to get rid of it.

While you'll probably get downvoted for this because it's not super politically correct, this is really a key point.

It's uncomfortable but sometimes the biases are rational. IE there are subgroups that are more or less likely to cause damage. It can be quite unfair to many members of the subgroup.

One option other than making it illegal is to socialize the risk. Airbnb could offer some universal damage insurance. This would at least remove the potential rational economic incentive for the property owner to select against certain groups.

Educating people of the facts is what led to this outcome. Obscuring the facts is what Airbnb is trying to do.