Airbnb: how US civil rights laws allow racial discrimination on the site

The sharing economy exists in a legal grey area beyond the reach of hard-won civil rights laws, and black users say they experience discrimination as a result

The four black students who sat down at a white's only lunch counter at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960 catalyzed a nationwide protest movement that led, eventually, to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: landmark legislation that outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations - restaurants, stores, hotels, and other businesses.

Fifty years later, however, the segregated lunch counter is making a stealthy comeback, thanks to the innovations (and regressions) of what has become known as the sharing economy.