Airbnb Host Who Canceled Reservation Using Racist Comment Must Pay $5,000

BlueFireIce said:
Racism in that sense requires power and a "superior" race, that does not exist here. Her comment was prejudice, her reason for canceling was not. The comment was in the way of "should have known", if you read the texts it's extra request after request, booked and then asked about adding two people, then asked about adding a dog even though she said no, but then agreed to it being ok but would cost more and she would send an invoice for it, it is clear she never paid that invoice or she would have the receipt of payment. She then texts her a month later and says we bought ANOTHER dog and want to bring it as well, the owner also reluctantly agrees to this. But she wanted two extra people and two dogs for only $50 more a night, which the owner told her no.....See where the Asian and "wanting something for nothing" comments came from now?
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Racism doesn't require anything of the sort, according to both state and federal law. You may not agree, but the law is fairly clear on this point. Again, if Ms. Barker had kept her mouth shut, at worst she'd be paying for alternate lodging for this customer. At best, AirBnB might have sided WITH her and she'd be out nothing. Since she decided to make it a racial issue and TEXT it, she's now out $5k and a chunk of her free time.

I see the customer's actions here align with your own personal prejudices about Asians. I can say I've worked with a number of Asians over the years, and I don't personally share that prejudice. But just because this customer was behaving as you feel a stereotypical asian behaves doesn't give Ms. Barker the right to make those statements while cancelling the victim's contract.
 
Bandalo said:
Well, if you don't care what she or her lawyer said, then how can we even have a discussion? This entire argument is about what she said. You CAN draw some conclusions about the fact she was willing to agree to this settlement though. People don't agree to settle for huge fines and such if they're 100% innocent of all charges.
And "volunteer" is frequently used in this country to describe someone who is working without monetary compensation, regardless of their motivation.
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Guys, this is getting tiresome.
-I need to read the text exactly, word by word in order to conclude. If i have the entire text, i need no lawyer in order to make an assumption, but in this case i don't have the entire text........!!!!
-Example: we are a team that climbs a mounten. And someone says: " we need a volunteer to go explore the west side of the mounten , while the rest of the group will head east" . In this example, where does the term "money" fit in?
 
BlueFireIce said:
Racism in that sense requires power and a "superior" race, that does not exist here. Her comment was prejudice, her reason for canceling was not. The comment was in the way of "should have known", if you read the texts it's extra request after request, booked and then asked about adding two people, then asked about adding a dog even though she said no, but then agreed to it being ok but would cost more and she would send an invoice for it, it is clear she never paid that invoice or she would have the receipt of payment. She then texts her a month later and says we bought ANOTHER dog and want to bring it as well, the owner also reluctantly agrees to this. But she wanted two extra people and two dogs for only $50 more a night, which the owner told her no.....See where the Asian and "wanting something for nothing" comments came from now?
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So what you're telling us is it's not racism since Asians really are dirty and cheap? Got it.
 
Related but not a dead on match - Someone tried to book one of my cottages and said they would be bringing 50% more people than I indicated the cottage could accommodate (they wanted 12 people in a 8 person cottage). I turned down the booking request with a polite "just too many people for that little place, sorry" . Later on it turns out the guy was Tamil or something (I don't care about that , I rent to anyone who follows the booking guidelines - money is color blind).

AirBnB then proceeded to block those available days off my Airbnb calendar as unavailable for further rentals and sent me an email warning me about not sticking to their policy of being non prejudical and accepting all people etc etc...

No skin off my ass because I barely do any business through the company (three weeks last year.. whoop de doop). I promptly sent an email back to Airbnb with an ASCII picture of a cat showing it's butthole with the title "this cat can't read and neither can Airbnb" outlining the issue they sent me the warning letter over. I commented that if I got further emails accusing me of being a racist I'd bring it to the human rights tribunal (like I have time for that BS).

They basically treat property owners like idiots and try to force you take whatever is thrown your way so they can get their cut. Some properties I've entirely deslisted from the site because they attract shitty applicants.
 
Sith'ari said:
-I need to read the text exactly, word by word in order to conclude. If i have the entire text, i need no lawyer to make an assumption, but in this case i don't have the entire text........!!!!
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Here is the text that's pertinent:

upload_2017-7-13_16-50-14.png


There's no other way to take this as anything but a straight up racist comment and the reason why she canceled. Now if she was just being mean, yeah sure. But if someone said this to me I'd take it the same way because it's so perfectly clear.
 
BlueFireIce said:
Of course they did, it's Cali, and why would they turn down free money? The overall direction of government, no less Cali as far as what is called "racism" has grown due to general ignorance and lumping. Her lawyer is going to say whatever, and it was also in relation to the comment. Again, as I have said over and over and over and over again, I was explaining what she meant by it and in no way said it was ok or right. Please, for the love of god read.
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"Free money"? DFEH has to initiate and complete an investigation. That costs money. And as I said in my first post here, DFEH reserves the right to dismiss a complaint. They received 23,510 complaints in 2016. 12,242 complaints request a "right to sue," which bypasses the investigation process. Of the remaining 23510-12242=11,268 complaints, 4,799 were investigated.

https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2017/07/DFEH-AnnualReport-2016July6.pdf

If I got that right, that means DFEH rejects more than 50% of the complaints that don't request a "right to sue" (4799/11268 is about 43%). If this was just about "free money," they wouldn't reject any complaint.

You aren't "explaining" what she "meant." You can't because you're not Tami Barker, nor are you her lawyer. You're "explaining" what you think she "meant," and really, what you're doing is just rationalizing her racism by downplaying it as "prejudice." Never mind that you've already been told that a dictionary definition of racism is "racial prejudice or discrimination."
 
Sith'ari said:
Guys, this is getting tiresome.
-I need to read the text exactly, word by word in order to conclude. If i have the entire text, i need no lawyer in order to make an assumption, but in this case i don't have the entire text........!!!!
-Example: we are a team that climbs a mounten. And someone says: " we need a volunteer to go explore the west side of the mounten , while the rest of the group will head east" . In this example, where does the term "money" fit in?
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I won't argue the first part. It'd be nice to have the entire chain of communications. I suspect the group that investigated this and came to this agreement DID have more than we've seen. We can only base our discussions on the facts we have at hand.

Volunteer in that case would also be used accurately. There IS no money there, the volunteer is receiving no monetary compensation for this additional duty. In the case of Ms. Barker, she's been ordered to report to this organization as a volunteer, where she will do additional work, but receive no monetary compensation.
 
This kind of seems like race baiting if you look into the details more and the Asian woman's background.
 
Bandalo said:
I suspect the group that investigated this and came to this agreement DID have more than we've seen.
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I suspect that too, and if they didn't, I'd like to know who Tami Barker's lawyer was so as to never hire that guy.
 
heatlesssun said:
There's no other way to take this as anything but a straight up racist comment and the reason why she canceled. Now if she was just being mean, yeah sure. But if someone said this to me I'd take it the same way because it's so perfectly clear.
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I think there is. I think profiling and racism are not the same, and I think racism is over-used when, in reality, profiling is more likely. I do, in this case, believe she meant that 'Oh, great, here's another Asian trying to get a freebie.' Racism to me would have been more along the likes of 'Your Asian, I hate Asians you can't have my cabin and go die.' I think the race card is over-played these days.
 
Shotglass01 said:
I think there is. I think profiling and racism are not the same, and I think racism is over-used when, in reality, profiling is more likely. I do, in this case, believe she meant that 'Oh, great, here's another Asian trying to get a freebie.' Racism to me would have been more along the likes of 'Your Asian, I hate Asians you can't have my cabin and go die.' I think the race card is over-played these days.
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In your example, "Your Asian, I hate Asians you can't have my cabin and go die." is pretty damn close to the actual response of: "I wouldn't rent to u if u were the last person on earth. One word says it all. Asian".

Seems pretty racist to me.

The non-racist version would be: "I'm not okay with changing the terms of our original agreement, I'm sorry but I'm going to cancel your reservation".
 
Sonicks said:
In your example, "Your Asian, I hate Asians you can't have my cabin and go die." is pretty damn close to the actual response of: "I wouldn't rent to u if u were the last person on earth. One word says it all. Asian".

Seems pretty racist to me.

The non-racist version would be: "I'm not okay with changing the terms of our original agreement, I'm sorry but I'm going to cancel your reservation".
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I disagree. I think it was certainly a 'heat-of-the-moment' response to a deal gone bad. But she absolutely had agreed to rent to an Asian. Although I do see your point. I just don't believe she is. I think she made a judgement call on a race of people in the heat of the moment. So I still consider that profiling.
 
Shotglass01 said:
I disagree. I think it was certainly a 'heat-of-the-moment' response to a deal gone bad. But she absolutely had agreed to rent to an Asian. Although I do see your point. I just don't believe she is. I think she made a judgement call on a race of people in the heat of the moment. So I still consider that profiling.
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That was profiling and that is racist. Instead of choosing to stick to her guns, and cancel the agreement early and for the terms she felt strongly about (being firm), she waited and did it in a vindictive way and made it about race. She didn't have to do that. There was an easy way out the whole time.
 
Shotglass01 said:
I disagree. I think it was certainly a 'heat-of-the-moment' response to a deal gone bad. But she absolutely had agreed to rent to an Asian. Although I do see your point. I just don't believe she is. I think she made a judgement call on a race of people in the heat of the moment. So I still consider that profiling.
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And I'll consider it casual racism on your part.
 
Cool well we'll all have to agree to disagree. I also forgot to mention that I had meant her initial response to renting to an Asian would had have to had been 'No your Asian, you can't have my cabin.' Not her actual response when she found out about the additional pets/people. That I believe is when she profiled. Full on racism to me would have been the Baker's first response- 'Your Asian, you can't have my cabin at all.' when Suh first inquired about it. Yes, sorry this is changing the goal post, and I meant to include it beforehand.
 
Shotglass01 said:
I think there is. I think profiling and racism are not the same, and I think racism is over-used when, in reality, profiling is more likely. I do, in this case, believe she meant that 'Oh, great, here's another Asian trying to get a freebie.' Racism to me would have been more along the likes of 'Your Asian, I hate Asians you can't have my cabin and go die.' I think the race card is over-played these days.
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Shotglass01 said:
I disagree. I think it was certainly a 'heat-of-the-moment' response to a deal gone bad. But she absolutely had agreed to rent to an Asian. Although I do see your point. I just don't believe she is. I think she made a judgement call on a race of people in the heat of the moment. So I still consider that profiling.
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I think you're trying to have it both ways here. To me, the race card being overplayed these days means people are trying to inject race in situations where race is not involved. But in this case, race was involved, explicitly: "I wouldn't rent to u if u were the last person on earth. One word says it all. Asian".
 
Shotglass01 said:
Cool well we'll all have to agree to disagree. I also forgot to mention that I had meant her initial response to renting to an Asian would had have to had been 'No your Asian, you can't have my cabin.'
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What does that have to do with what she said later? Who is to say that she went along with it at the beginning and canceled at the last moment because she really doesn't like Asians? Someone says that don't want to do business with me because of my race, that person is a racist by definition. There is no sequence of events that in any way shape of form make such clear racist statement not racist.
 
Cool agree to disagree. I think race card is overplayed. Take it as you wish. And I work with all races in harmony. :)
 
heatlesssun said:
What does that have to do with what she said later? Who is to say that she went along with it at the beginning and canceled at the last moment because she really doesn't like Asians? Someone says that don't want to do business with me because of my race, that person is a racist by definition. There is no sequence of events that in any way shape of form make such clear racist statement not racist.
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Have you ever used Airbnb before? You can SEE the person's picture/profile. The renter would have known ahead of time that the girl was Asian. There is something missing from this story that isn't being said.

No idea why you are getting so bent out of shape about this anyway. It didn't happen to you.
 
heatlesssun said:
BINGO! It's in "the heat of the moment" when people lose self-control and reveal who they are.
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Naw, I'd personally do that just to troll you. Even if you were a pale white guy from Sweden background I'd call you anything at all if I was trying to get under your skin. I don't really believe there's much difference among ethnicities on a genetic level so I'd have to target something cultural. Fat Muricans, or seal porking Canadians or whatever would most likely set you off. My grandad sold your grandad - anything at all is good. Everyone has a trigger. The difference is I would never do that by text, that's boorish. You have to wait till you can see their sad faces.
 
face2palm said:
Have you ever used Airbnb before? You can SEE the person's picture/profile. The renter would have known ahead of time that the girl was Asian. There is something missing from this story that isn't being said.

No idea why you are getting so bent out of shape about this anyway. It didn't happen to you.
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Ugh, psst the Asian woman's pic is in the text.
 
Astral Abyss said:
This kind of seems like race baiting if you look into the details more and the Asian woman's background.
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face2palm said:
There is something missing from this story that isn't being said.
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I'm kind of surprised that several of you continue to take this "look into the details more" / "something missing from this story" position. It was a reasonable position to take when this story first broke, but even if you didn't read the article HardOCP linked to, the title of this thread is "Airbnb Host Who Canceled Reservation Using Racist Comment Must Pay $5,000." So, really, what more do you need to know?
 
face2palm said:
No idea why you are getting so bent out of shape about this anyway. It didn't happen to you.
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I was raised by parents that lived into their 40s under Jim Crow. Of all of the things that they HATED about that time, denial of access to public facilities was the thing they never got over.
 
Simplyfun said:
Naw, I'd personally do that just to troll you. Even if you were a pale white guy from Sweden background I'd call you anything at all if I was trying to get under your skin.
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Call me whatever, deny me business in clearly stated words because of my race, yeah, that's going to be a problem for me. I get the derogatory concept of SJWs and snowflakes and all of that, but it's not like there wasn't a huge social revolution in this country that was in large part catalyzed by the denial of services based on race. And the reactions in this thread by some are pretty much like they would have been 50 to 60 years ago.

The only way the situation improved for people like my parents is when people made a fuss over it. Nothing would have changed if people just kept it to themselves.
 
heatlesssun said:
Baker said in unequivocal terms that it was due race.
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Source?

Bandalo said:
Racism doesn't require anything of the sort, according to both state and federal law. You may not agree, but the law is fairly clear on this point. Again, if Ms. Barker had kept her mouth shut, at worst she'd be paying for alternate lodging for this customer. At best, AirBnB might have sided WITH her and she'd be out nothing. Since she decided to make it a racial issue and TEXT it, she's now out $5k and a chunk of her free time.

I see the customer's actions here align with your own personal prejudices about Asians. I can say I've worked with a number of Asians over the years, and I don't personally share that prejudice. But just because this customer was behaving as you feel a stereotypical asian behaves doesn't give Ms. Barker the right to make those statements while cancelling the victim's contract.
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It actually does, per law. It requires unfavorable treatment on the base of race in such a case of this, that would not apply to someone of another race. However, what we see is the owner bending over backwards for the client as well as dropping the no pets rule for the client.

The customers actions don't align with my prejudices of Asians, so why make those assumptions? Oh, right....Prejudice.

The client broke the contract and never paid the second invoice, she had every right to cancel. Was she right in the comments? Nope.

Not sure why that is so hard to understand, everyone always has to be on one side or the other. She can both cancel the booking and be in the right for it AND make incorrect comments. One does not necessarily define the other.

illram said:
So what you're telling us is it's not racism since Asians really are dirty and cheap? Got it.
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No, it makes it prejudice. It's not racism due to the fact there is nothing to show that the client was treated in any way that another person of another race would have been. Her canceling was correct, her comments were not.

I also said nothing about Asians being cheap or dirty.

alexyang said:
"Free money"? DFEH has to initiate and complete an investigation. That costs money. And as I said in my first post here, DFEH reserves the right to dismiss a complaint. They received 23,510 complaints in 2016. 12,242 complaints request a "right to sue," which bypasses the investigation process. Of the remaining 23510-12242=11,268 complaints, 4,799 were investigated.

https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2017/07/DFEH-AnnualReport-2016July6.pdf

If I got that right, that means DFEH rejects more than 50% of the complaints that don't request a "right to sue" (4799/11268 is about 43%). If this was just about "free money," they wouldn't reject any complaint.

You aren't "explaining" what she "meant." You can't because you're not Tami Barker, nor are you her lawyer. You're "explaining" what you think she "meant," and really, what you're doing is just rationalizing her racism by downplaying it as "prejudice." Never mind that you've already been told that a dictionary definition of racism is "racial prejudice or discrimination."
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Her canceling was due to breaking the contract and not paying the second invoice, its funny that gets ignored in all of the replies, and the only focus is on the single comment.
 
Sith'ari said:
volunteer is someone that makes something based on his own free will, without being forced.
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If you volunteer, that is correct, but I literally quoted one of the definitions from Merriam Webster.

a person who does work without getting paid to do it.

If you've got a problem with that definition, you'll have to take it up with Merriam Webster.
 
heatlesssun said:
Someone flat out says they are denying the business of another because of race is textbook racism. It's not a matter of opinion, it speaks for itself.
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Again, with context, and what I saw, opinion. I don't believe it was denied due to race as the text says. I believe her true intent was profiling. But whatever.

BlueFireIce said:
Her canceling was due to breaking the contract and not paying the second invoice, its funny that gets ignored in all of the replies, and the only focus is on the single comment.
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Exactly. Because, race!
 
BlueFireIce said:
Her canceling was due to breaking the contract and not paying the second invoice, its funny that gets ignored in all of the replies, and the only focus is on the single comment.
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And again if it was because of these reasons why was it that Baker said what she said?
 
BlueFireIce said:
Source?



It actually does, per law. It requires unfavorable treatment on the base of race in such a case of this, that would not apply to someone of another race. However, what we see is the owner bending over backwards for the client as well as dropping the no pets rule for the client.

The customers actions don't align with my prejudices of Asians, so why make those assumptions? Oh, right....Prejudice.

The client broke the contract and never paid the second invoice, she had every right to cancel. Was she right in the comments? Nope.

Not sure why that is so hard to understand, everyone always has to be on one side or the other. She can both cancel the booking and be in the right for it AND make incorrect comments. One does not necessarily define the other.
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Ms. Barker directly stated her decision to cancel the contract was based on the race of the customer. Now Ms. Barker may have had other reasons, but in her statements she said it was racially motivated. You can't really judge her other reasons since she didn't use them in her messages.

Again, if she had just kept her mouth shut on that very last message, she wouldn't be in this mess. You CAN both cancel a booking and make racial slurs. When you do them both, it makes it impossible to separate your actions from your motive.

If I walk into the office and fire one of my employees while calling them a racial slur, I'm going to get sued and I'm going to lose. I can pull out a years worth of records showing the employee was under-performing, showed up late to work, and constantly didn't flush the toilet, and I'm still going to get sued and lose the case. If I just called him a fat sack of crap, and kicked him out of the building, I'd have no problems regardless of race. As soon as I (as the person in charge of the situation) bring race into the issue, I've undermined my own decision.
 
BlueFireIce said:
It's not racism due to the fact there is nothing to show that the client was treated in any way that another person of another race would have been.
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Tami Barker said, "I wouldn't rent to u if u were the last person on earth. One word says it all. Asian".

Now, I don't know about you, but something tells me that if Dyne Suh were "Diane Sanders," white woman, "Diane Sanders" wouldn't have been told "I wouldn't rent to u if u were the last person on earth. One word says it all. Asian" because "Diane Sanders" isn't Asian.

Her canceling was due to breaking the contract and not paying the second invoice, its funny that gets ignored in all of the replies, and the only focus is on the single comment.
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My focus has mainly been on the facts that the California DFEH completed an investigation and fined Tami Barker $5000, and Barker's own lawyer has said her actions were "impetuous."
 
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