Airbnb, an online marketplace and hospitality service that allows its customers to rent or lease lodging, is usually the beginning of exciting trips with friends and family. However, an Asian woman recently suffered a harsh blow to her identity when a host cancelled on her simply for her being Asian. She and a group of friends had been planning on going on a ski trip, only for the trip to be cut short when they discovered that they would not have a place to stay for their vacation. The tearful video above depicts a stripped-down, bare account of the effects of racism on one's very psyche.
The host texted her, “I will not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners" and "It’s why we have trump.” She summed up her thoughts on the incident with the short, cruel statement, "One word says it all. Asian." Dyne Suh responded to this racial hate with the following words:
“I beg for people to think about if such discrimination can happen to a light-skinned cis East Asian woman who is in law school, middle class, in a heterosexual relationship, able-bodied, is a U.S. citizen, and Christian, how much harder it must be for people who are less-advantaged and please stand with them,” she wrote. “I only got discriminated against for lodging on a ski trip - other people have gotten murdered, or otherwise far more seriously harmed for their identities.
“Sending love, solidarity, and strength to all those who have been discriminated against, gratitude to all those who have come out with open hearts and expressed sympathy, and a prayer for everyone else that someday you will see the evils of prejudice and intolerance and learn to love thy neighbor."
Suh's experience shows how much the world around us is still afflicted by such blatant prejudice and racial hate. Some even say that, despite it being 2017, nothing much has really changed -- the prejudice isn't going away. Rather, it's in hiding, an often invisible undercurrent that runs through our everyday thoughts and actions.