One guy has revealed how he had a blatantly racist encounter while trying to book an Airbnb stay.
Rohan Gilkes tried to book a cabin in Idaho only to find that the owners had taken an inexplicable dislike to him, reports Follownews.com.
Rohan – a startup entrepreneur and writer – took to his Medium page to outline his experience, and to be honest it makes for pretty grim reading.
According to Rohan’s account:
I booked this place on Airbnb for 5 days, July 1st to July 5th. Everything was set! As usual, I included a bit of info about myself on the airbnb listing to put the host at ease..
Rohan was nice enough to provide the homeowners with this short bio and a photo:
It turned out Rohan was actually going by himself, but figured he would just add the possibility of another person in case his friend wanted to stay too.
So, he was a bit surprised when the hosts responded saying:
Even though the dates were available, all of a sudden the host said she was going to use the place. This wasn’t a big deal for Rohan. He works for himself so he’s pretty flexible and tried for some different dates.
So, you’d imagine the host would get back to him with some suggestions, but no. Instead he got absolutely no response until this happened:
As you can imagine Rohan wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, so he got a friend of his – a white friend – to try and book the cabin for the same dates.
And, to his shock, this is what happened:
Pretty horrible – I think we can all agree. Rohan did some investigating and discovered he’s not the only black person who’s experienced #airbnbwhileblack.
He wrote on his Medium page:
As for those who’ll claim: “It’s their house, they can choose who they want to stay there,” I’ll reply: “Those are the things a person should consider BEFORE renting out their home.” And I’ll also reply: “How’s it feel to be racist?”
As long as the money is green, the skin color shouldn’t matter. If you don’t want ‘certain people’ renting your home, don’t put your home up for rent.
It’s an absolute disgrace that people would treat someone like that due to the colour of their skin and credit to Rohan for having such a measured and calm response to a disgusting situation.
