npr:

Quirtina Crittenden was struggling to get a room on Airbnb. She would send a request to a host. Wait. And then get declined.

“The hosts would always come up with excuses like, ‘oh, someone actually just booked it’ or ‘oh, some of my regulars are coming in town, and they’re going to stay there,’” Crittenden said. “But I got suspicious when I would check back like days later and see that those dates were still available.”

In many ways Crittenden, 23, is the target audience for AirBnb. She’s young, likes to travel, and has a good paying job as a business consultant in Chicago. So she started to wonder if it had something to do with her race. Crittenden is African American, and on AirBnb, both hosts and guests are required to have their names and photos prominently displayed on their profiles.

Crittenden shared her frustrations on Twitter with the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack. She started hearing from lots of friends who had similar experiences.

#AirbnbWhileBlack: How Hidden Bias Shapes The Sharing Economy

Photo caption: After Quirtina Crittenden changed her photo to a cityscape, she says she stopped having problems finding a room on Airbnb.

Photo credit: Quirtina Crittenden