Taxi Fleet Is Blind to African Americans

I know the rage and embarrassment that shook actor Danny Glover when five cabdrivers recently refused to pick him up on New York city streets. A couple of years ago my wife and I and another African American couple stood fuming on a mid-Manhattan street on a cold, windy evening in December as we watched empty cab after empty cab sail leisurely by, ignoring our increasingly frantic signals for them pick us up.

One cabdriver glanced at us, waved us off and then stopped a few feet in front of us to pick up a white couple. Finally, out of desperation, we asked our wives to stand on the corner while we ducked behind a corner building. They continued to furiously wave at cabs to stop. They had no better luck than we had.

After nearly an hour futilely trying to get a driver’s attention, we trudged a few blocks through the cold and caught a bus. The other couple with us, both native New Yorkers, just shrugged and said that’s the way it is there with cabs.

Thankfully, Glover didn’t shrug off taxicab racism. He filed a complaint and held a press conference to protest his treatment. Glover’s action once more put a spotlight on ugly cabdriver racism as sore spot for blacks in big-city America.

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and police officials immediately vowed to crack down on cabdrivers who refuse to pick up blacks. The instant they put the heat on, the drivers were on their best behavior. But why did it take officials so long to do something about cabby racism? And will it always take a black celebrity crying racism for officials to take action?

The last time cabdriver racism stirred any kind of response from officials was when former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, an African American, complained that cabs refused to pick him up. Even before Dinkins public outcry made brief news, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, which regulates the city’s cabs, launched its own sting operation. The commission fingered a score of drivers who blatantly passed up black passengers to pick up whites.

Many cabdrivers claim that screaming racism is too simple. And, true, there are many horror stories of drivers being beaten, robbed, assaulted and even murdered by passengers or thugs lurking in alleyways in black neighborhoods.

While some drivers exaggerate or flat out lie about the danger to their physical safety as a cover to practice discrimination, their fears of violence are real and shouldn’t be ignored. But this is no excuse for not picking up black passengers simply because they are black. The fact is, cabdrivers have been preyed on by thugs of all colors, including whites. These assaults can and do occur in any and every part of a city. Yet cabdrivers don’t routinely refuse to pick up non-blacks.

Also what are the odds of a cabdriver being mugged or murdered by an African American dressed in a business suit or a tailored outfit and carrying an attache case? Yet many cabdrivers routinely refuse to pick up nattily dressed black professionals on sight.

A friend who briefly drove a cab in Los Angeles bitterly told me that everybody he knew in the business did everything they could not to pick up black guys. Glover’s experience along with mine and countless other African Americans who are victimized by the racist practices of some taxi drivers suggest there is much truth to his claim. This is a vicious system of on-the-street redlining that penalizes and criminalizes all African Americans. It also denies a crucial public transportation resource to the thousands of African Americans who depend on cab service to get them to entertainment activities, airports and business engagements, not to mention their homes.

Cabdriver associations say it would help to have better multicultural training. Glover says he believes more police and community involvement in the diversity training is needed. I say the best thing to do is to keep doing what Giuliani did and nail the cabbies who discriminate with tough penalties.

The pity, though, is that it took a celebrity for that to happen.