When women riders and drivers told us they wanted more control over how they ride and earn, we listened. That feedback led to Women Preferences, features designed to give women the choice to ride with other women. Since our first pilots last summer, we’ve heard just how much that choice matters—from feeling more comfortable in the back seat to more confident behind the wheel.
I mean, as a company whose business is pairing riders with drivers, it begs the question why this isn’t already an option so long as drivers can also choose not to drive for people flagged as a certain way. If a MAGA person only wants white people driving for them then that will reduce the effectiveness of the app for them, provides service for someone who otherwise would be difficult as a customer, and it prevents them from harassing or bothering potential victims.
If I want to, as a driver or rider, I think I should be able to choose not to be driven or ride with someone who has been flagged by others as overly visible. That might mean someone who won’t shut up about MAGA while I or they drive, it might be someone who has 15 bumper stickers about their beliefs, or it might be someone who has their car wrapped with Hatsune Miku. The consequence of this decision might mean that I have to wait an extra 15 min for a ride or it might mean that because of my actions people no longer wish to ride with me.
Yes, I think that’s a good idea.
So you disagree with the Civil Rights Act then? Because one of the things it did was force businesses to serve customers, regardless of things like race or sex. And before we had it, there where large parts of the South where black people would be refused service, and if someone did serve them, they’d lose a bunch of white customers.
That’s the very good reason why it’s “not already an option.”
Neither drivers nor Uber have the right, or should have the right, to refuse service based on categories protected in the Civil Rights Act.
But that’s not how Uber works, Uber pairs drivers with riders and has no guarantee for service even now. If I open my app and there are not drivers available then no service will be provided, this isn’t Uber discriminating.
Uber doesn’t care what your race, gender, or political leaning is, they want to provide you the service you want. So long as the option goes both ways this only hurts the people who opt into the program, not everyone else. The only way this could hurt others would be if those who choose to opt in (as in they only want a certain thing) get priority in the scheduling or if you live somewhere where you are the overwhelming minority.
In the first example, if you say you only want female riders so the system sends you every woman that comes into the system instead of putting you in the same queue as everyone else but skipping you if the next client doesn’t match your preference. In this case you are being skipped in the allocation of riders and actually missing opportunities due to your preference.
In the second example, if you are still living in a sun down town then getting Uber rides is probably not your biggest problem.
Even now, Uber drivers are independent contractors and can cancel service whenever they want. If the driver pulls up and thinks you’re sketchy they can cancel the ride, there is no obligation.
So the only way it could hurt anyone is if they’re a minority. Yes, that’s exactly why we have the Civil Rights Act and why what you’re suggesting is illegal.
Next you’re going to tell me that black people in racist towns should just eat at home if restaurants don’t want to serve them. And if the bus driver makes you sit at the back of the bus, just drive a car.
This is a bullshit legal category that exists primarily to exploit loopholes, but even that does not give anyone the right to discriminate and violate the Civil Rights Act.
Strictly speaking, if a driver cancelled every ride that a black person booked, they could be sued for it, although such a suit would be very difficult in practice because you’d have to have enough records of that driver (or the company, if that was the target of the suit) to show a consistent bias.
This is the case in every business. Denial of service based on protected classes is illegal.
The difference in what I am saying and what you are saying is scale and you are completely ignoring the rest of my argument. The scale at which you would have to be a minority for this to impact you significantly is somewhere in the 1-5% range (as in your minority is only this percentage of the local population) with the assumption that the other 95-99% are opposed to you. This is why Uber providing this as an option is different from the cases which the Civil Rights Act was based around. Hell, this is why scabs are effective against unions as well.
A diner not serving black people is impactful because a handful of people are the business owners and are effectively gating you out. Uber allowing those people to select only a specific preference means that anyone who doesn’t set restrictions will break that system and actually benefit from it (more business).
This also goes both ways and is potentially international, Japanese could choose not to serve non-Japanese, a black person could choose not to serve white people for comfort or security.
You’re fundamentally not understanding why Uber allowing people to make this decision is not the same as 1960’s segregation.
OK, so you need to reach a threshold of 5% of the population before you’re allowed to have rights, got it.
That assumption isn’t actually necessary.
Let’s say there’s a small town where 65% are non-racist (or less racist) whites, 30% are racist whites, and 5% are black. If your diner decides to serve that 5%, the 30% of racists will refuse to eat there, and you’ll end up losing a lot of customers. So, rather than “95-99%” needing to be opposed to you, it only needs to be the case that your population is outnumbered by the people who hate you - which is the case for many minority groups in many places in the country.
That’s not really true. If if was just a matter of a handful of business owners being racists, then those racist businesses would be out-competed by non-racist businesses that appeal to everyone. The problem was wider and more systemic, being welcoming to everyone would cause racists to boycott the business, so even if a business owner wasn’t racist themselves, they would be incentivized to ban the people who the racists hated.
Because it isn’t! The scenario you described is literally the exact sort of thing the Civil Rights Act exists to stop! You are literally advocating for allowing denial of service based on protected classes!
You’re just attacking me, not my argument
You skipped the whole counter argument (comparing to scabs and unions) that this lacks the social structure to support that behavior. If you tried to open a business that wasn’t racist then the racist people would come and threaten you, this isn’t happening with the Uber situation.
The thing is that Uber is not performing any discrimination, they are enabling other people to discriminate against each other and attempting to still provide service through it. Claiming that Uber is discriminating is functionally not true.
No, I’m pretty clearly attacking your argument. Your argument rests on this assumption that if allowing denial of service based on race only affects minorities <5% of the population, that that makes it acceptable somehow. It’s a horrible position but the fact that it reflects very poorly on you to voice it is beside the point.
Regardless, the Civil Rights Act applies to all businesses. It doesn’t matter if you think one particular business model makes the Civil Rights Act unnecessary - it is still the law. And opening up exceptions to it would set a dangerous precedent.
It doesn’t matter either way. “Discriminating” and “enabling discrimination” are both illegal. I have no idea why you’re so attached to this legal technicality of “contractors” that Uber uses to skirt labor laws, because it doesn’t even change anything here. Declaring someone a contractor does not magically repeal the Civil Rights Act.
Yes, they specifically do. They need to know the riders’ genders in order for pairing to work.
You’re being pedantic, they don’t care as it pertains to whether they will provide you with service. They do care so that they can match yours and other people’s requests.
Right, they do so in order to organize people into specific categories, and provide different services based on those categories.