On Racial Bias and the Sharing Economy

Summary

When I first started with UberX, I was getting a lot of negative ratings. I asked the other drivers, “Guys, what am I doing wrong?” And they said, “Listen, you got to put some candy and water in the back.” I did, but my rating didn’t move. So then I cut my name in half, to Americanize it, and after two months my rating had jumped up. – Hass, NY Magazine

According to Susie Cagle, “the sharing economy doesn’t build trust—it trades on cultural homogeneity and established social networks both online and in real life.  Where it builds new connections, it often replicates old patterns of privileged access for some, and denial for others.”  Take, for example, the widely-cited Harvard Business School study by Edelman and colleagues on Airbnb that found that, controlling for other factors, “non-black hosts earn roughly 12% more for a similar apartment and similar ratings and photos relative to black hosts.”