I call that a result
What kind of idiot makes comments like that when in the rental business - lucky to get away with still having a roof over their own house!
Dear racist Airbnb host, we've enrolled you in an Asian American studies course
An Airbnb host who cancelled a guest's booking at the last minute because she was Asian has been fined $5,000 and told to attend a course on Asian American studies. Tami Barker owns a mountain cabin in Big Bear, California, northeast of Los Angeles, and it was booked by law clerk Dyne Suh for a skiing weekend back in February …
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Friday 14th July 2017 16:06 GMT dougdaslug1
Re: I call that a result
She sure shouldn't of used the foreigner remark for sure but I don't automatically believe she's racist, people boil over and say things they would take backi, after all she was willing to take remedial courses whether to lessen a harsher penalty, Ill give her good faith on that but, If someones going to come to my place of residence and not understand that they are guests I would have no problem telling them they're not welcome no matter how far or where they're from.
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Thursday 27th July 2017 21:24 GMT P. Lee
Re: I call that a result
Was the cancellation behaviour-based, or based on some inherent physical attribute of the guest?
The late stage of the cancellation seems to indicate the former. Airbnb is meant to be cheap and simple. That lowers the bar for, "this isn't worth it."
I wonder what the defendant's view of Asians is now? Not just fussy but litigious too? Will she welcome them with open arms after her reeducation?
Meh, speculation without information is fun, but only useful at a theoretical level.
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Thursday 13th July 2017 21:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I call that a result
"What kind of idiot makes comments like that when in the rental business"
In America they still have free speech. The punishment wasn't so much for the comments (which are not illegal there) as for the discrimination. The comments just helped prove it was discrimination...
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Friday 14th July 2017 07:21 GMT gandalfcn
Re: I call that a result
"In America they still have free speech" I think you misunderstand what free speech is, it doesn't mean licence to abuse people or be racist, which so many Septics and quire a few Brits seem to think.
It arises from freedom to criticise the government of the day but has been hijacked to mean an excuse to be obnoxious.
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Sunday 16th July 2017 00:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I call that a result
""In America they still have free speech" I think you misunderstand what free speech is, it doesn't mean licence to abuse people or be racist "
Yes it does. Any limitations like that and it's no longer free speech by definition. The USA manages just fine without such restrictions.
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Friday 14th July 2017 07:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I call that a result
lucky to get away with still having a roof over their own house!
Even for racism that is harsh, nay, idiotic, because it would have the opposite effect.
Now there is a fine and mandatory creation of clue via education, but if you take the house away, you have created a still ignorant but now dangerously fanatic racist because that person is not going to lay the blame by themselves.
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Friday 14th July 2017 07:28 GMT werdsmith
Half the Story
Stupid of the host to act like that and inexcusable, got what she deserved etc, but....
This is one sided reporting. First of all Barker accepted the booking knowing who the guest would be, from her name, profile etc.
Then there were frequent polite comms where the booking was changed, renegotiated. Two extra guests were added. Then the guest asked to bring a small dog, and the host said no because they have a pitbull in the house. Guest persisted and eventually the hosts agreed to remove their own dog from the house to accommodate the dog.
Messages on the day of arrival have been withheld by the guest (?? hmmm) but relationship broke down and became hostile, with the guest delaying arrival until 2AM-3AM. The host lost patience.
Some people haven't realised that an airBnB booking is not for a Howard Johnson, you are actually going to be a guest in someone's home.
So I think the reason they cancelled is because the guest really did mess them about, but still really stupid to use those words in doing so.
They had the opportunity to refuse the booking long before, and didn't, then went out of their way to accommodate the guests. Of course, nobody is interested in that.
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Friday 14th July 2017 12:29 GMT PatientOne
Re: Half the Story
You missed out that there was also a disagreement over how much would be paid to cover the extra costs: Apparently it ended at $50 extra - and then more changes were demanded.
Adding in the extra detail does change perception of the incident. Barker was still wrong for the abusive response, but now it might be evident as to how it got to that point and, perhaps, how such incidents might be avoided in future: Better guidelines and support for the hosts so they have someone to ask if things start going sour.
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Thursday 13th July 2017 20:12 GMT Chris G
Contrition
Only applies to people who get caught, Barker's willingness to comply with her sentence is only to avoid more trouble.
If she had not been outed she would still be discriminating against all who don't fit her idea of 'not foreign'.
Other than human, non of our genes can be said to be of any pure race, racism is not only a crime it is crass ignorance.
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Friday 14th July 2017 00:19 GMT Blake St. Claire
Re: Contrition
> Strange - "Barker" doesn't sound like a Native American name, and they're the only
> ones who can legitimately claim to be "not foreign"
Gotta wonder what you're smoking. Even the so called Native Americans came to the Americas from somewhere else.
Hence why I like the Canadian term "First Nations."
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Friday 14th July 2017 03:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Other than human, non of our genes can be said to be of any pure race
I have some bad news for you, Chris.
Significant fractions of modern humans' genome has been contributed through cross-breeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans. Both are different species from ours.
We are all mongrels, so live with it.
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Friday 14th July 2017 05:05 GMT Chris G
Re: Other than human, non of our genes can be said to be of any pure race
Ac, that was exactly my point, we are all mongrels. A good, thing , the wider the gene pool the more opportunity for good outcomes rather than producing banjo players.
Apologies for my discrimination toward banjo players!
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Friday 14th July 2017 12:45 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Other than human, non of our genes can be said to be of any pure race
Significant fractions of modern humans' genome has been contributed through cross-breeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans. Both are different species from ours.
I hate to break it to you, but part of the definition of species is that two members of the same species can generate viable, fertile offspring.
By that measure, the two groups mentioned (and they must have had viable, fertile offpring for the genome to mix with H. Sapiens) can't be a separate species..
Separate sub-species sharing significant ancestry with H. Sapiens - yes. But not an entirely separate species.
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Saturday 15th July 2017 05:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Other than human, non of our genes can be said to be of any pure race
I hate to break it to you, but part of the definition of species is that two members of the same species can generate viable, fertile offspring.
Actually, no, this is not how species is usually defined in modern biology.
I am just too lazy to type up the definition from a textbook, so I'll copy-paste the substantially identical text from the Wikipedia article on species:
Mayr's biological species concept
Ernst Mayr proposed the widely used Biological Species Concept.
Main article: Biological Species Concept
Most modern textbooks use Ernst Mayr's definition, known as the Biological Species Concept. It is also called a reproductive or isolation concept. This defines a species as groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups".[23]
It can be argued that this definition is a natural consequence of the effect of sexual reproduction on the dynamics of natural selection.[24][25][26][27] Mayr's definition excludes unusual or artificial matings that result from deliberate human action, or occur only in captivity, or that involve animals capable of mating but that do not normally do so in the wild.[23]
Many other definitions of species exist as well.
In any event, the definition of species boundary is rarely clear-cut, especially for the evolutionary closely-related organisms. In the case of the Homo genus, some authors consider Neanderthals and Denisovans to be species; others are more inclined to call them sub-species. Molecular biology evidence seems to suggest that both are sufficiently genetically distinct from modern humans to qualify as separate species.
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Friday 14th July 2017 12:51 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Racism is a social construct
but it's pretty easy to work out 'race' from your genes
Haplogroup != "race".. especially as there are considerable variations within what people consider a "race" - a "white British" person might well belong to a completely separate haplogroup from the "white British" person next to them) and the genetic markers.
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Friday 14th July 2017 10:04 GMT phuzz
Err, your skin colour is very much affected by your genes, all of which affect how, and how much, melanin is produced by your skin cells. It's worth noting that people with lighter skin, have ineffective, or faulty versions which cause their skin not to develop as much melanin as our (very distant) ancestors once did. It's hypothesised that although this leaves people more at risk of sun burn and skin cancers, it does allow them to produce more vitamin D in the lower levels of sunlight in the northern hemisphere.
Although, of course, the other large factor is how much time you spend in the sun, even I can get a respectable tan if I spend a lot of time outside in the sun and I'm pasty as fsck.
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Friday 14th July 2017 12:54 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
t's hypothesised that although this leaves people more at risk of sun burn and skin cancers, it does allow them to produce more vitamin D in the lower levels of sunlight in the northern hemisphere.
In other words - it's an adaption to local conditions that allowed people who posessed that mutation to thrive in lower sunlight levels.
Noting mysterious or special about it.
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Friday 14th July 2017 12:49 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
there is no "white" gene!
Out of interest (and not wishing to give ammunition to the racist morons), is the expression of the melanin-producing gene epigenetic? Otherwise, there would have to be observable differences in the genome to account for the difference in expression.
(And I'm fully in agreement - the differences between the 'races'[1] is a matter of culture and upbringing, not base genetics)
[1] As you can see - I think that word isn't really meaningful..
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Thursday 13th July 2017 20:31 GMT Notas Badoff
Short-term memory
How many Americans know the ancestry of even their grandparents, much less great-grandparents?
For every single -ish or -ism trying to get to America in the past there were people actively opposing their ancestors. Every single religion, regionalism, language, or 'look', there were Americans hating them.
Why has this been forgotten?
Or... is it being 'celebrated'? :-((
We're the Benighted States of Unawareica!
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Thursday 13th July 2017 22:20 GMT jgarry
Re: not EVERY single regionlism or language
Well, here's two guys: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Attacker-Gets-Light-Sentence-in-Fire-Pit-Beating.html
The discrimination rules are different if you are renting out a room in your house: http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/discrimination.shtml
And yes, Big Bear is 100 miles east of LA. If you go west from the LA airport area, you'll be in the ocean. Big Bear even has the Time Bandit pirate ship: http://www.bigbearboating.com/pirate_ship.html
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Friday 14th July 2017 00:01 GMT John Brown (no body)
"insert name of third generation German-American here"
I must admit to being puzzled by the number of times I hear Americans refer to that sort of thing. Are they all ghettoised and stick with "their own"? Surely by the 3rd generation they are likely be even more mongrelised than their immigrant forebears in terms of mixed heritage.
One set of great grand parents were Irish. Another set were English but of French descent. Does that make me Irish-English, French-English or, as I prefer, just English (or British, or European (for now) as I choose)
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Friday 14th July 2017 00:50 GMT Mark 85
One set of great grand parents were Irish. Another set were English but of French descent. Does that make me Irish-English, French-English or, as I prefer, just English (or British, or European (for now) as I choose)
As my father used to say: "What it makes you is American. We're all of the Heinz 57 breed."*
*I and many others of my generation understand the reference to "Heinz 57". I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to fathom its meaning. A good place to start is "mongrel" .
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
