We have come so far with Racial Discrimination, but at the end of the day it still exists and unfortunately it is coexisting with Uber and Lyft drivers. How and why is this occurring? It is definitely unfortunate considering that Uber has become such a well-known and successful company over the years. It is sad to see that it is turning to racism. It will leave a negative impact on the company and I’m sure some people may think twice about using Uber.
So in terms of Uber Drivers being racist, it all comes down to your name and associated ethnic or racial background, which is obviously unjust. It could determine whether your Uber or Lyft driver cancels the ride, and how long you’ll wait. According to reports, those with “African American-sounding” names waited as much as 35 percent longer than those with “white sounding” names, and dealt with more frequent cancellation rates.
Reports were conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Washington and Stanford University in California. 1,400 orders of the ride share services Uber and Lyft in Boston and Seattle were conducted. The patterns of discrimination were quite clear and consistent in both cities.
It is only evident that if racism is occurring in these two cities that it is going to spread to other cities across the world, which is not good and is definitely a red flag. Christopher Knittel, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of management and simultaneously one of the authors of the study founds the statistics and this news to be alarming as the issue of Racism is clearly still an issue and it sometimes gets overlooked. We would think in 2016 that things would be different, but clearly this is still a problem.
Uber says it facilitates 1 million rides per day, while Lyft completes about half as many daily rides. Uber’s non-discrimination policy promotes that it is illegal to partake in discrimination against riders or drivers based on race, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sex, marital status, gender identity, age or any other characteristic. In addition, it states that violators will lose access to the app.
Lyft’s procedure also pledges deactivation from the platform as a result of discrimination. So clearly, these companies are not following their guidelines. You should practice what you preach and if you don’t, well you should face the consequences. So as a result it’s not clear how well the companies, which dominate the ride share industry, are enforcing these rules.
When it comes to discrimination, Uber and Lyft aren’t the only ones at fault. Home-sharing service Airbnb faced a class-action discrimination lawsuit in May from an African American user who alleged that a host in Philadelphia had canceled his stay on account of his race. In regards to how the system and app runs, Airbnb users’ profiles include a first name, headshot, brief description and reviews of their previous accommodations or stays.
After the Philadelphia-based host initially rejected him, the plaintiff, Gregory Selden thought it would be smart to test and see if the company was actually racist. He created two fake accounts featuring profile pictures of white men using the names Todd and Jessie. The host accepted both of the imitation profiles. This only proves that the company was racist unfortunately. Why these companies are being so racist is not clear. It looks as though white supremacy is an issue.
Racism exists in many areas of work and Do Something represents some shocking facts that correlate with the Uber issue. Studies indicate that police are more likely to pull over and frisk blacks or Latinos than whites. In New York City, 80% of the stops made were blacks and Latinos, and 85% of those people were frisked, compared to a mere 8% of white people stopped.
