Comment on Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US
Objection@lemmy.ml 23 hours agoSo 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.
Knightfox@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
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 one of the 10 black people 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.
Objection@lemmy.ml 23 hours ago
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.
Knightfox@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
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.
Objection@lemmy.ml 22 hours ago
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!
frog_brawler@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Yes, they specifically do. They need to know the riders’ gender in order for pairing to work.
Knightfox@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
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.
frog_brawler@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Right, they do so in order to organize people into specific categories, and provide different services based on those categories.