Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Fortunately, the folks with whom I usually spend it are out of town. I say ‘fortunately’, because in my current mood I would be hard-pressed to cover my true feelings.

While the narrowest definition of “my world” keeps chugging along, with nothing causing woe, my full world is, as the saying goes, going to hell in a hand-basket.

Or, more accurately, on a well-greased slide made of hate.

I understand hate up close and personal, as opposed to an intellectual or conversational concept.

Over the years I’ve built up layers of armor starting around age 5

So it’s difficult to believe I was naïve enough to agree with a friend, whose email detailing the problems inherent in political correctness became a post in 2015.

Being a black man, I prefer a racist that’s honest about who he is and what he is. I prefer working for such a person because I know what to expect. I presume it would be the same for you as a woman regarding sexists. These days no one is a racist, we just have “unconscious biases” that prevent us from taking unpopular positions and that ensure that the powerful can continue to exclude the less powerful.

Politically correct environments rob me of information, choice, and the ability to navigate astutely to attain my objectives.

What a difference two years and one election makes.

Kevin no longer wonders who is a racist — it’s very obvious.

And I get to end my life amidst the same hate I grew up with.

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More technical problems made this post very late. My apologies.

Be sure to ready Ryan’s post tomorrow; he’s far more upbeat than I.

Have a wonderful turkey day and I’ll see you all Friday.

Image credit: Purple Slog

Considering it’s 2016 the unbelievably racist targeted advertising choices offered by Facebook are hard to swallow.

Harder still are their explanations.

First, they claim to prohibit this kind of ugly targeting.

Facebook says its policies prohibit advertisers from using the targeting options for discrimination, harassment, disparagement or predatory advertising practices.

They claim that advertisers won’t misuse these options.

“We take a strong stand against advertisers misusing our platform: Our policies prohibit using our targeting options to discriminate, and they require compliance with the law,” said Steve Satterfield, privacy and public policy manager at Facebook. “We take prompt enforcement action when we determine that ads violate our policies.”

But their worst excuse is the old A/B test.

Satterfield said it’s important for advertisers to have the ability to both include and exclude groups as they test how their marketing performs.

Hence my question.

Is Facebook really so naïve they actually believe that the so-called “affinity choices” won’t be abused or, in the name of profit, do they just not care?

Image credit: Facebook via Pro Publica

Tech says they’re trying.

Experts love to call it “bias,” “diversity crisis” or some similar polite euphemism.

A simpler, more recognizable and much less politically correct term is bigotry — conscious or not.

Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky calls it discrimination, pure and simple, and wants to eradicate it from his platform.

“When we designed  the  platform, three white guys, there were a lot of things we didn’t think about,” Chesky said to an audience at the conference. “There are racists in the world and we need to have zero tolerance.”

There’s no question that people of color, especially African Americans, have more trouble booking on Airbnb.

There’s also no question that people of color are exercising greater and greater buying power.

As of 2014 Hispanic’s spent $1.3 trillion, people of African decent $1.1 trillion, Asians $770 billion and Native Americans $100 billion.

That’s a whole lot of buying power.

There’s also no question that Airbnb has been slow to recognize/admit to the problem — as has the rest of tech.

In a serious effort to change, Chesky has hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to “craft a world-class anti-discrimination policy.”

“This process isn’t close to being over, but we want to be as transparent as possible along the way because I know we’ve failed on that front previously. I want us to be smart and innovative and to create new tools to prevent discrimination and bias that can be shared across the industry.”

Which makes it likely Chesky is serious, since guys like Holder don’t come cheap — nor are they easy to shut up or buy off if the company isn’t serious.

Hopefully it will help.

But it will more likely be a cold day in hell before anyone or anything changes racist MAP.

Image credit: Wikipedia

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