Airbnb has had its share of high profile problems recently, but none of them top the atrocity that one TikToker pointed out this week: The site is home to several vacation rental listings for pimped out former slave quarters — a pretty bold move for a company that prides itself on diversity and inclusion.
Wynton Yates, an entertainment and civil rights attorney who goes by @LawyerWynton on TikTok, recently exposed a (since-removed) Airbnb listing advertised as “The Panther Burn Cottage @ Belmont Plantation” in Greenville, Mississippi. In its description — as seen via screenshots on Yates’s TikTok — the listing boldly says that the cottage once served as a slave quarters in the 1830s before it was used as a sharecropper cabin and later a medical office. To add insult to injury, the listing’s owner has Superhost status, a designation Airbnb gives to “someone who goes above and beyond in their hosting duties and is a shining example of how a Host should be.”
