Two Older African-American Women From Memphis Ask About Uber

Passengers are always asking about Uber, and this time, these two inquiring tourists from Tennessee received a very unexpected response.  Though before I tell you my reply, I think everyone should know that the positive embrace Uber received from local governments was not accidental, something often cited as nothing less than a prescient embrace of a new technological age sweeping the nation but I know it as something much more, something insidious and malignant.  While few will admit, or comprehend, it is related to the year 1619 and beginnings of slavery in North America and the kinds of institutionalized discrimination and hatred we still grapple with today in 2019 in these United States.

What Uber's founders, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp had in common, was being both Caucasian and socioeconomically Upper-Middle Class, traits easily recognizable to elected bureaucrats in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and elsewhere in modern America, this essential point forming the crux of my response to the shocked residents visiting from Memphis: that the Uber founders were white, making them easily embraceable by the majority white mayors and City and County Council members, applying a kind of trust never before seen by the nation's taxi industry.  I told them that I knew they knew all about it, themselves treated as second-class citizens in this fine country we share, something they certainly couldn't deny.

And being white is why Uber continues to have investor support while losing over 10 billion dollars alone since 2016.  Can you imagine this kind of financial trust in a company run by African-Americans (blacks)?  How much money has Uber loss since its 2009 inception?  Something between 30-40 billion.  It is breathtaking, the kinds of losses investors have absorbed but still holding onto the fanciful, financial mirage that is Uber, and to a lesser degree, Lyft.

And what color is America's taxicab industry?  Black and brown, along with a smattering of feral Caucasians like myself who just aren't quite white enough, me with my Eastern European and Sicilian heritage.  Why did the City of Seattle and King County continue to insist on fingerprinting us annually year after nonsensical  year?  Well, you know the answer.  It is obvious.  I just told you.