Uber made it easier to avoid black riders

It’s a strange feeling to open the Uber app in a lowincome San Francisco neighborhood and know you’ll wait an eternity before a car comes your way.

Drivers don’t flock to the places I frequent — San Francisco’s Bayview and Hunters Point and Fillmore neighborhoods, and across the Bay Bridge in East Oakland. Add in the fact that I’m a young black man — my photo on the app is me wearing a hoodie and baseball cap — asking for a ride out of a neighborhood known for street crime, and my Uber wait times can be more than 30 minutes.

I’m not alone in this. Research shows that black riders face longer wait times and more frequent cancellations than white riders. In 2016, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a study that found Uber drivers in Boston were about three times more likely to cancel trips from male riders with African Americansounding names. The study also showed that black passengers in Seattle were waiting 35% longer for a ride than white passengers.

I’ve been known to soapbox about this Uber issue to my nonblack friends, but it isn’t until I describe actual personal experiences that people understand the scope of the problem.

Last weekend, for example, I needed an Uber to pick me up at Reardon and Kiska roads in Hunters Point, near the Willie Mays Boys and Girls Club. As I watched the little animated cars near me on the app, I waited 27 minutes for an actual driver to head my way.

In East Oakland near 78th and Garfield avenues, I had a driver cancel my ride only blocks from my location, maybe after realizing the neighborhood was home to lowincome black and brown residents. I’m familiar enough with the experience that any real reaction of shock or dismay would be fake. It simply is what it is.

And it all feels familiar. It turns out ridehailing apps like Uber have done little to mitigate that same discrimination that plagued the taxi industry decades ago.

Growing up, I remember my dad would joke about trying to hail cabs in the South. Taxis would pass him while his hand was raised and choose instead to pick up a nearby white passenger. Sometimes he would have his nonblack friends call for a cab.

The black male experience of using

Uber seems to be the same even decades later. It isn’t unusual for a driver to ask me if they can drop me off near a black neighborhood instead of having to drive into it. And sometimes, if I’m out on the town with nonblack folks in certain areas, I’ll ask one of them to use the app and just split the cost with me.

Now, Uber’s recent policy changes are only going to make the problem worse for black riders.

Until this new year, a driver would only see a passenger’s destination once they were in the vehicle. This made it more difficult for drivers to avoid servicing specific neighborhoods. Last week Uber drivers were given the ability to see a passenger’s destination in any ride request.

Uber emailed 150,000 California drivers and millions of passengers this month to alert them of the policy changes, part of the company’s response to AB5, the new gigwork law that makes it harder for companies to claim their workers are independent contractors instead of employees. But now Uber may have another problem: Unless the platforms directly address how much easier it may be for drivers to discriminate, people like me will continue waiting for rides that never come.

Uber’s guidelines may state: “It is not acceptable to discriminate on the basis of a rider’s destination or a customer’s delivery location.” But if left up to individual drivers’ discretion, I know where this is headed, especially since fewer than 10% of Uber drivers in the country are black, according to Uber’s 2019 diversity and inclusion report.

There are ways for Uber to address this discrimination problem: Make it mandatory for drivers to participate in racial bias training. Make it easier for riders to obscure their appearance and ethnicity through the app. Employ more black drivers. These policy changes could happen with the same ease with which Uber has implemented any other.

Otherwise, when it comes to racial discrimination in the ridehailing world, the more things change — apps and smartphones — the more they stay the same — drivers avoiding black areas. It looks like my father’s era all over again.

Research shows that black riders face longer wait times and more frequent cancellations than white riders.