#35. Waiting for a Taxi

Invariably, the stigma of public transportation (a forthcoming SBPDL) causes people to refrain from taking the bus or light-rail with the unpleasantness of this experience far outweighing the benefit or convenience of such a trip.

This is why suburbs were created, so that whitopia’s could form where white people could leave the madness behind. Most importantly no public transportation route could bring unwanted or undesirable elements into these communities, and the expansion of train tracks could be stopped by a city council determined to keep out an unsavory element so often found loitering at malls and other public areas.

It's never fun being Black and needing a taxi

The people left behind to dwell in urban areas have found public transportation just as colorful, quickly turning to a more expensive alternative lest they wish to enjoy that same element so many undesirable white people escaped to the suburbs to avoid.

In New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta and other major cities the only alternative to public transportation is walking and the elements and distance between start/end location precludes this option. The taxi becomes the optimum device for transportation, saving many people the embarrassment of traveling via public transportation though the cost associated with such an ego-demoralizing trip might be the cheaper decision.

The taxi offers an inebriated passenger safe passage home, though the conversation will usually be one-sided because the person driving the automobile has an inability to speak to comprehend English yet curiously has the ability to acquire a license.

Relaxing in the taxi the passenger can relax knowing that the laws of physics dictate that no accident can ever transpire in such a vehicle, regardless of how fast the driver goes or how many times they slam on the brakes to yell indecipherable obscenities at the car that cut them off.

Taxi drivers have the ability to quickly size up the person flagging them down and are known to assiduously avoid certain segments of the population, most notably the blind.

Funny then that taxi drivers and people living in whitopia’s have one glaring similarity which binds them, though the latter rarely admits it: both avoid Black people (even Stuff White People Like – SWPL whites- do as well).

Black people do not tip and Black people have a propensity for committing crime. Though not all Black people practice the art of leaving niggardly gratuities or commit crime with wanton abandon, enough do to create a phenomenon known as Breathing While Black (not to be confused with Driving While Black ).

Breathing While Black (BWB) is a condition that debilitates all relationships between Black people and non-Black people, because the stereotypes associated with the worst elements of Black people naturally are believed to be practiced by all Black people, despite their appearance and ability to command speak coherently.

It is the taxi driver (strange that such a high percentage of them are Black) who dares employ the iniquitous practice BWB-thinking most frequently, with stories of Black people waiting for a taxi only to see that driver speed past them without a moment’s hesitation, a common occurrence across the nation’s big cities:

When you stick your hand out, you expect the cab to stop. But there’s a certain type of guy out there who feels like he’s always getting passed by.

“I get upset when they don’t stop, but then, it’s hard to take a taxi when you’re black,” says Craig Brown from Southeast Washington.

“It’s too hard to get a cab in D.C. because D.C. is biased,” says Man Thomas from Northeast D.C.

A growing number of black men in the District say an age-old problem is getting worse.
"You'll flag down and they go past you,” Brown says. “Then they'll stop down the street for a white person."

So Fox 5 decided to put D.C.’s cab drivers to the test.

Meet Darryl Brown and Rick Yarborough. Darryl’s a Fox 5 Photographer. Rick is Fox 5’s Investigative Producer. They both went to college, they work in the same place, and they are the same height and build. They’re wearing similar clothes—a sports coat and a backpack-- leaving just one big difference. Darryl is black and Rick is white.
For our test, Darryl tries to hail a cab the same time as Rick, who will stand about 10 yards farther down the street. We start in Capitol Hill, where the cab drives right past Darryl and picks up Rick instead.

We repeat the experiment at some of the most popular spots in the District: Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Georgetown, and Friendship Heights. Cabs skip Darryl and pick up Rick three out of five times.

“That’s inexcusable. That is racial discrimination,” says Nathan Price.

The only reason that taxi drivers participate in the putrid game of discrimination is because of the odiferous stench of BWB-thinking, perpetuated merely by the continued high levels of disproportionate crime that Black males commit.

Clearly, Black males must stop committing such disproportionate amounts of crime in cities throughout the United States or else BWB-thinking will remain entrenched and taxi drivers will remain dogmatic in leaving Black people with their thumb in the air.

This will only extend the stigma against public transportation, with more Black people being forced to ride buses and light-rail systems. What a vicious cycle the game of BWB-thinking inevitable leads us all into.

Taxi drivers pass by Black customers

Now the president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers is proclaiming that cab drivers should profile Black (and that pesky group that immigration reform could shut out completely) people in order to stay safe:

MYFOXNY.COM - Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, is telling cab drivers that for their own protection they should profile potential passengers who are black and Latino.

Mateo, who identifies himself as both black and Hispanic, made his comments this week after a livery cab driver was shot several times by a man police describe as Hispanic. The suspect was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, which Mateo has said is a red flag.

The private cab driver was fighting for his life after being shot at least four times by a robber who ended up getting less than $100.

Dramatic video released by New York police showed the struggle between the gunman and a driver.

Mr. Mateo would go on to say:

In case the NYPD wasn’t racially profiling enough, cabbies might be joining in on the action, too. After a livery cab driver was shot in Queens last weekend, the President of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers responded on Monday at his own press conference with some, um, discriminatory remarks: “I don’t care about racial profiling. You know, sometimes it is good we are racially profiled, because the God’s honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics.”

It is apparent Mr. Mateo reads The Washington Post and understands that violent crime seems to be an enterprise monopolized by one group in New York City (well, everywhere).

Taxi drivers wish to stay alive so that they can pick up drunk, obnoxious young white people and charge their credit card an extra zero instead of driving into war-torn areas that might lead to a mugging:

It is not that all taxis won’t pick up Black people. Some of them do. It is not that all taxis don’t go into Black neighborhoods. Some of them do, and it would be economic stupidity for them to avoid such a large swatch of the city, south and west. But enough of them steer clear of those neighborhoods, and anyone they think might live in those neighborhoods, to make it a bit more difficult to hail a cab if you are Black.

Oddly, studies have shown that tipping is considered racist now as well because white taxi drivers receive a greater tip on average than their Black counterparts:

Should tipping be outlawed? That's one suggestion made in a new study, which finds there's extreme racial discrimination in taxicab tipping, reports The New York Times. This isn't the first study to reach such conclusions. Is this a microcosm for wage gaps in corporate America and other salaried environments? What's going on?


Many studies document discrimination against consumers based on race (read Shopping While Black: One Serious Shopper's Customer Service Nightmare), but few analyze discrimination based on the race of the "seller," in this case the driver.

Black cab drivers were tipped about a third less than white cab drivers, the study found. Black passengers also participated in this discrimination against Black taxi drivers. And the overall "tipping shortfall" causes total revenue per fare for Black drivers to be 7 percent less than white drivers, which perpetuates economic inequality.

There is nowhere for Black people to hide from BWB-thinking, as it pervades every sector of society even contaminating those minorities in power into forcing them to declare that profiling might be a good thing.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes waiting for a taxi. That BWB-thinking is found in every city where taxi drivers peddle their wares means that one can rule out a conspiracy in action to keep Black riders on the sidewalk.

That taxi drivers zoom past potential Black clients (when 25 percent of taxi drivers are Black) tells you all you need to know about the state of Black America.