When Quirtina Crittenden first tried booking rooms on the shortterm rental platform Airbnb, she kept getting turned down. Then she modified her profile, shortening her name to “Tina” and using a generic landscape photo instead of a portrait—and hosts approved her requests. In 2016, the black 24-year-old created the #AirbnbWhileBlack hashtag to share experiences of racial discrimination on the platform. The hashtag went viral, and Crittenden discovered that she was far from the only black…

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