OBJECTION!

The scale at which you would have to be a minority for this to impact you significantly is somewhere in the 1-5% range

OK, so you need to reach a threshold of 5% of the population before you’re allowed to have rights, got it.

with the assumption that the other 95-99% are opposed to you.

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.

A diner not serving black people is impactful because a handful of people are the business owners and are effectively gating you out.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

In the second example, if you are still living in a sun down town then getting Uber rides is probably not your biggest problem.

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.

Even now, Uber drivers are independent contractors

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.

If the driver pulls up and thinks you’re sketchy they can cancel the ride, there is no obligation.

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.

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.

This is such an individualist framing.