Why Airbnb Banned Me
Throughout the summer, I have been studying the columns written by Michelle Malkin. Michelle Malkin is an American conservative political commentator. She worked with Fox News for a long period of time while also becoming an author. She has also founded various conservative websites as well. Malkin tends to write about her life experiences while also passionately sharing her political opinions to go along with this as well.
In this column, Malkin goes into detail about her negative experience with Airbnb that ultimately caused her and her husband to become unable to ever use it. She says that she went to a conference to speak about “Race, Immigration, and Con. Inc: How I Came to See the Light” but how this group she represented was then “deemed a ‘hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League.” Shortly after this, she received an email saying she was banned from Airbnb since they did not approve of her being associated with this group. She quotes this email when it says, “Due to your promotion and participation in a known white nationalist and white supremacist conference, we have determined that we will remove your account from Airbnb.” She then reflects on this by saying that they banned her because they have “woke” ideas that do not associate with her beliefs.
Malkin then goes on defending herself by saying that she is a woman of color so she should not be accused of being a white supremacist. She then explains how she was not the only one banned when she says, “The Airbnb bullies also banned my equally nonviolent, nonhateful husband — who did not attend the conference and who is not a public figure or activist.” She thinks that this part was especially unacceptable since they do not technically know her husbands beliefs and punished him as well for her behavior. Overall, she expresses in this column that many companies like this are involving more of a political standpoint that is what she believes is left-winged. She thinks that companies like this should not be able to ban someone based on their own personal beliefs.
Discussion Questions: Do you think that it was acceptable for Malkin and her husband to be banned? Do you think certain companies are involving their political standpoints more than they should be?
In order for me to say whether or not I believe Malkin deserved to be banned, I would have to know more background information on the group she was in/promoting. Although Malkin thinks there was nothing wrong with it, it must have been bad for a very popular company to not only acknowledge it, but take action. But, I do agree it was unfair of Airbnb to ban her husband since he had no involvement in the group or anything. I think people are more politically involved than ever before. So inevitably, they urge companies and celeberties to do the same and speak on certain topics to align with the trend. Certain topics though, like racism, are not necessarily political and they are formed based on morals. Therefore, I think with only a select few subjects, companies and brands should actually speak about because it helps bring more awareness to things maybe not covered enough by the media. But when it comes to actual politics, I think it’s best if brands refrain from sharing their opinion because it just seems to be dividing us/their customers even more.
It is difficult to say whether or not she and her husband should have been banned from Airbnb, given that there is not an immense amount of information to pull from here. However, with what I can tell, Michelle Malkin appears to be quite ignorant around the fact that a person of color cannot be a white supremacist. Anybody who believes the ideals of white supremacy, regardless of color, belongs to that group, so her using this as a defense is unacceptable and pointless. Now, whether or not she was actually contributing to the advancement of a group of white nationalists is debatable, which is why it is difficult to say whether or not she should have been banned, but I do think that the company can choose who their customers are, and they have full authority over that, so it really doesn’t matter whether or not she should have been banned, because she simply was. To answer the second part of the question, I certainly do think that companies are beginning to involve their political ideologies much more, but at the end of the day, it is completely up to them, and they entirely make the rules for what they can and cannot accept, as said earlier.
I think that private companies should be able to refuse their services to people. They need to protect their reputation as companies. If they do business with people who are both public and controversial people such as Malkin then a large part of their customer base might choose not to do business with them. Because of that it could possibly loose the company large amounts of money. I think that it is unfortunate that she was banned but companies should.be able.to protect their reputation in this way.