When she and I planned a girls’ trip to Corsica in the summer of 2007, we attracted the intrigue of locals who weren’t accustomed to seeing Black women on the island who weren’t prostitutes. When they looked at us, walking together in our bikini tops and shorts, arms full of magazines, books, and rolled beach towels, living our best lives, they surely did not see an aspiring journalist from Chesapeake and a budding novelist from Queens or a descendant of American slaves and child of Ghana. They saw two Black women. “The only Black women we see around here are on the music videos on TV,” the owner of our hotel admitted to me. I was too happy to be on vacation with one of my closest friends, skinfolk and kinfolk, heading out for a day of luxuriating on a boat in the Mediterranean and talking about life, love, and writing, to care what he meant.
Chapter 10
Make Yourself at Home, but Not Here
I just wanted to book an Airbnb. How difficult could that be? A series of rejections waiting in my inbox was my answer.
“Helen is unable to host your stay,” the first one read.
This was surprising. The property was listed as being available. All of the Airbnb listings in my search results were. A “HUGE, luxury” two-bedroom flat in Dulwich. Semi-terrace half houses in Forest Hill. A one-bedroom in Peckham. All available, until they weren’t.
There was the woman whose “sprawling, trendy flat, one minute from the train station” was listed as being free for the entire month of February. But when I submitted a request to reserve the place, she denied it and sent a chipper rejection: “Sorry, but I don’t know the dates I’ll be travelling that month. Hope you find somewhere!” The cheeriness of the “hope” and the undercurrent of something decidedly much less cheery stood out to me as prophetic, which of course they were.
Next, the “large, slick, modern family home.” “I can’t do those dates, I’m afraid.” She suggested dates beyond my window.
And then “the house with fantastic views of London”: “Our house isn’t available on those dates. We should have blocked out the calendar!” Permit Patty.
Airbnb profiles require a headshot, inviting the kind of snap judgments that fuel online dating apps like Tinder, Grinder, and Bumble. My photo was polished and pleasant: me smiling in Comme des Garçon stripes, naturally lit by the sun, my skin unambiguously Black. My name, an African country. Extra Black.
I was no stranger to the experience of Black paranoia, a uniquely pernicious kind of suspicion in which the lived experience of discrimination makes you highly attuned to it, no matter which end of the spectrum the bias falls on. I knew there are no interstices between unconscious bias and racism, which exist in unison as one big crag and tail. My alarm bells were sounding.
I tried requesting one more booking as a test—a “gorgeous flat with a HUGE garden”—located just down the road from where I live. The rejection came quickly: “We’re having work done on the place that month. We should have blocked out the calendar. Sorry we can’t help you!”
I was dismayed. Having spent a chunk of my adult life writing for publications with large readerships, I was accustomed to brands asking me to stay in some of the best hotels in the world in exchange for my published opinion of them. I’ve stayed in lavish five-star hotels in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Rome, Florence, and Kyoto, to name a few. It shouldn’t be this hard to reserve a flat in Peckham.
If one is looking for a clear example of the fallacy of respectability politics, one need look no further. No number of degrees or impressive job titles will protect you from the damning sting of a surface judgment.
I was looking to book in late September, hardly high tourist season. The schools would be back in session. Not to mention that the neighborhoods I was seeking were well off the sightseeing path.
The occasion was my parents’ upcoming arrival to visit their soon-to-be-born second grandson. Their trip would be several weeks long. So it seemed more sensible to rent a flat local to my house. After they spent full days helping us with the baby, I wanted them to be able to retire to a space of their own, where they could have a good night’s sleep rather than have to deal with both jet lag and the round-the-clock crying a newborn might bring.
I had heard booking while Black could prove tricky. A close friend from Detroit once asked me to write a testimonial for his Airbnb account, attesting to his good character and legitimate line of work in much the same way people might post glowing words about a Chinese takeaway on Google Review. My friend was a handsome actor with a steadily growing IMDB CV, a frequent flyer who was having difficulty finding a place to stay during his upcoming holiday in Madrid. I balked at his request (“Does this not feel desperate?”) but agreed. It reminded me of my years dating in New York, all those nights in which I’d have to be the one to hail the cab because Yellow Taxi drivers rarely ever wanted to stop for Black men.
“Could you be sure to sign the testimonial off with your work title?” my friend asked me. “That will look more impressive,” he said. I brushed it off, not realizing that without the recommendation, his attempts to find lodging would probably be in vain.
This memory fresh in my mind, I sent a message to the last of my rejecters out of curiosity: “I’m sorry to hear the place is now unavailable. If the circumstances change, please let me know.” I signed the note with my name and job title. Minutes later, I got a response: “Give me 24 hours to try to make this work.” And just like that, the “work” scheduled to be done on the home was no longer an issue.
I could only assume that my alliance with a powerful magazine or a quick Google search had assuaged any reservations the owner initially had about accepting my booking—and that whatever those original concerns were, they had been related to my appearance. Specifically, my skin tone (because what else could it be?). In short: an old problem on a new platform.
I didn’t follow through with the booking, out of principle. But the indignation stuck.
I’m accustomed to seeing bigotry online. Usually it comes in the form of inflammatory social media comments attached to ambiguous profile photos, viral video clips of White people calling the police on Black people for essentially being Black, earning nicknames from Black Twitter like “Permit Patty,” and, increasingly, from the mouth and Twitter account of the president of the United States. But this kind of racism is often consumed at a distance and positions us as witnesses rather than direct recipients. But with Airbnb, the perpetrators aren’t anonymous or sequestered behind a shield of Secret Service men and White House walls. With Airbnb, the perpetrators are visible, smiling with nice homes. Homes into which they’re waiting to welcome complete strangers with open doors—as long as those strangers aren’t Black. As long as those strangers aren’t me.
The Airbnb rejections also heightened the reality that racism is all around us. Because if that is the case online, it must also be so in real life. The polite swerves don’t just come from nowhere, they come from the attractive five-bedroom house down the road from where you live or the apartment building on a neighboring high street. Or the lovely seeming people you wave hello to on your way home. Or the friendly looking couple standing across from you on the train platform during your morning commute to work. People with clearly drawn boundaries that fall on racial lines. Not all people. But enough.