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"Lethal" Racism
It was cold and windy. After about 10 minutes of not getting a cab, Stephen turned to me and said, "Dad, why isn't anyone picking us up? How are we going to get home?" I told him not to worry and said, "Son, we're going to get a cab. But we have to be a little patient." After another few minutes a cab picked us up on 7th Ave and headed uptown for the train back to Jersey. We played the game of trying to pronounce the cabby's name on his shield then asked him to do it for us. He was good-natured and friendly. He was especially nice to Stephen. Soon were on the NJ Transit train back home. I thought about that experience the other day when actor Danny Glover held a press conference to denounce the horrific experience blacks, particularly black men, have in trying to get a cab in New York. Glover, who has starred in several hit movies including the "Lethal Weapon" series, told of his experience in which five "on duty" cabs passed him by on an uptown street. According to Glover, "The breaking point was to stand outside 116th Street and have five cabs pass me up. I was so angry." Glover also talked about his daughter who is a student at NYU and has had similar experiences; "The fact that my daughter goes to school here, it really upsets me... It happens to her. It happens to countless people every single day. The fact that I'm a celebrity, the fact that I'm visible, allows me to draw attention to this." A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a cartoon strip "controversy" at Rutgers in which some students complained that the strip was racist, when any remotely intelligent person could see that it was in fact a satirical anti-racist statement. I said one of the by-products of this PC attitude is that it trivializes legitimate instances of racism and prejudice. The experience of blacks not being able to hail a cab in New York is one of those instances. Danny Glover gets credit for holding that press conference and putting pressure on the powers that be to do something about this atrocious situation. It is important to expose such blatant forms of racism. It is important for cabbies to know that people will not tolerate them picking and choosing who they are going to pick up. This is not simply a "New York" issue. It is an issue all of us, regardless of color, must speak out on. Many of us who live in New Jersey spend time in New York. We spend even more time there around the holidays. I look forward to going to Rockefeller Center with my son. Truth is, we see what Danny Glover was talking about all the time, yet we ignore it. I knew in my heart when my son and I had trouble getting that cab last year it wasn't because of the color of our skin. I knew it was a question of supply and demand. I was confident we would get one sooner or later. I guess that confidence comes with being white and knowing most people are not afraid of us. Blacks don't have such confidence, no matter who they are or what they have accomplished. Whether they are doctors, lawyers, social workers, teachers or actors. Imagine being Danny Glover -- he is 6'4", wearing a baseball hat, trying to go from Harlem to Greenwich Village. Worse yet, imagine if he were trying to go uptown to Harlem late at night? What do you think the odds would be for a cab would pick him up? Several black friends and colleagues of mine have told me stories similar to Glover's. A few have even admitted to getting a white person to hail a cab for them. How degrading. How disgraceful. Yet I never felt compelled to write about this issue until a famous actor went public about it. It's funny. Let's be honest here. Driving a cab is a dangerous job. Cabbies carry a lot of money and get robbed at gun or knifepoint sometimes. Some have been murdered. It's no secret that crime stats show that black men commit a disproportionate amount of the crimes on city streets. There are lots of complex reasons for that fact, but the bottom line is most people, including people of color, are afraid of black men. Can I understand a cabby being afraid to pick up someone they think might harm them? Of course. But such "racial profiling" is not only illegal, it is immoral. It is un-American. It is the reason so many blacks feel as if they are living in a different United States than the rest of us. It also sends a terrible message to our children. What's the answer? Cracking down on cabbies who practice such racism is a start. But it's not enough. All of us, particularly whites, must denounce the practice and make it clear that we won't tolerate it. To continue to ignore it because it's not happening to us demeans what we say we are as a nation. What do you think? Fax me at (973) 509-1659 or e-mail me at sadubato@aol.com.
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