’Ann Coulter’s Substack features this:
I was reading the Times today with my coffee, as I usually do, when I happened upon two entirely unrelated news items.
The story Airbnb Guest Robs Host at Gunpoint, Police Say (October 4, 2023) is illustrated with a picture, via Google Streetview, of a house in Georgia. (If you click through, there’s a picture of the black guy wanted for robbery, but of course no mention of either his race or the race of his victim.)
Soros D.A.s releasing criminals has made everything in our society run better!https://t.co/y9wUfD1I1R
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) October 4, 2023
The almost year-old story, probably suggested by the NYT website because both stories were about Airbnb [Black Travelers Say Home-Share Hosts Discriminate, and a New Airbnb Report Agrees, by Sara Clemence, December 13, 2022] is illustrated by a picture of a specific black woman claiming racism:
Some people of color — particularly Black guests — say that despite the policies and partnerships that home-sharing platforms have put into place, they still face discrimination when booking or staying in vacation rentals. https://t.co/VfWf7I3MQP
— Janelle Fiona Griffith (@janellefiona) December 15, 2022
There’s text on the picture that says
Tecsia Evans and her family were forced to leave a New Orleans Airbnb rental in the middle of their stay last year. The host, who lived in the building, said she had thrown a party, but Ms. Evans says the host acted because of racial prejudice.
I have to say that this is an incredibly common thing, for someone to violate house rules of some kind, be asked to leave, and declare it was racism. See the classic Starbucks case in 2018—white manager calls the cops saying “Hi, I have two gentlemen in my café that are refusing to make a purchase or leave, I’m at the Starbucks at 18th and Spruce,” and it was nationwide scandal.
In contrast with the NYT, BlackEnterprise.com leads with a picture of the robber, Khalil Hamilton:
Police say Khalil Hamilton zip-tied the host while his wife and child were in the home. https://t.co/1QsmSo9ufa
— Black Enterprise (@blackenterprise) October 3, 2023
Black people and white people have different ideas of how much noise is acceptable at a party, and it’s not racism if the white Airbnb owners react badly to loud noise after midnight, but there’s a further consideration for Airbnb hosts—the danger of an Airbnb party house shooting, which is a different kind of phenomenon.
Here’s a list from one week in 2022, via Michelle Malkin, below:
AirBNB has tried, not very hard to stop this, but of course the Civil Rights Act makes that difficult. What they can do is ban Dissident Right activists like @michellemalkin https://t.co/34YTmeoNx0
— VDARE (@vdare) January 31, 2023
However, any host who tried to protect himself, his home, or his family from that kind of thing would fall afoul of the Civil Rights Act, in a phenomenon I described in a 2008 column as Civil Rights Law Doesn’t Care If You Die.
