Austin Enshrined Racism In New Ridesharing Rules
Earlier this week, I read a story called “My White Boss Talked About Race In America And This Is What Happened” by Mandela Schumacher-Hodge. I was deeply moved.
Like many people, I’ve read the tragic stories about the innocent lives that have been lost over the past few weeks, but I felt lost and powerless to help. I don’t know the “right words” to say, I’m worried that I’ll be interpreted the wrong way and offend those I meant to help, and I feel like such an insignificant spec in eliminating racial injustice in America. I think that’s why Mandela’s article struck a chord with me.
It’s time to set my obsession with perfectionism aside and just do what I can to make our world a little more equal. Sure, racism makes us all feel a little uncomfortable. But what’s a little bit of uncomfortable conversation when it may just help us see one another as equals — as people who don’t deserve a bullet in the chest because of the color of our skin. Where might I possibly have enough influence to stop, or at least lessen, racial inequality?
Over the past year, I have been a very vocal supporter of ridesharing services (like Lyft & Uber). In December, I exposed the anti-competitive core of Austin’s new ridesharing regulations. The story I wrote received some 60,000+ views in 3 days, prompted Mayor Adler to release a statement about how Austin “wasn’t killing ridesharing”, and garnered enough public support that Lyft & Uber launched the petition that became Proposition 1 (arguably one of the worst managed ballot initiatives in modern history). I guess you could say Prop 1 was my fault… sorry, y’all!
However, when it came to issues of race, I was silent.
Although I included the letter from the Austin Area Urban League and Austin Branch of the NAACP to Austin’s City Council registering their strong opposition to Austin’s new rules, I didn’t talk about it in my own words. Because I was so scared to say the “wrong thing”, I took the easy way out by just embedding their letter. Personal comfort is no excuse for ignorance or silence when we see injustice around us. I missed an opportunity. It was an opportunity to talk about the racial disparity inherent in the fingerprint databases maintained by the FBI and Texas Department of Public Safety and that impact on hardworking Austinites. Maybe if I had said something instead of being silent out of fear, I could have stopped these discriminatory changes from becoming cemented in Austin’s city code.
Sure, ridesharing rules aren’t nearly as tragic as the loss of innocent lives at the hands of the very people that are supposed to be protecting them, but we have to start somewhere. By being silent, we empower the status quo and give our approval to the injustices, racial disparity, and white privilege that hurts our neighbors, friends, family, and fellow Americans. I can’t stop police brutality, but I can take a stand for fair treatment of ridesharing drivers and applicants like me.
In her story, Mandela makes the following call to action:
“I don’t buy the “I don’t know what to do” spiel. You have a growth mindset when it comes to everything else. Why do your critical thinking skills suddenly vanish when it comes to figuring out how you can contribute to this whole racial equality thing? Whether it be investing in a more diverse workforce, lobbying for judicial system reform, refusing to do business with cities and individuals that perpetrate racism…there are countless things you can take action on.” — Mandela Schumacher-Hodge [emphasis mine]
How right she is. Austin’s new regulations for ridesharing bring the opportunity for racial disparity into an industry that was operating very well without the new rules, for no additional benefit. When I did try to bring this up to City Council members, they ignored me entirely.
I pledge that I will not allow myself to be fingerprinted as a requirement to drive for a ridesharing company until there is at least one academic study that shows that it will make anyone even slightly safer. Until then, I will not drive for, nor ride with, a transportation service that is committed to fingerprint-based background checks for ridesharing drivers.
This is no small commitment. For the past two years I’ve been a Lyft driver in Austin, Texas. Ridesharing has been 100% of my income for about a year and a half.
Lyft and Uber suspended operations within Austin’s City Limits 70 days ago. Although Mayor Steve Adler has boasted of this golden age it's been less than magical behind Austin’s Iron Curtain as a handful of very young startups attempt to on-board thousands of drivers and fulfill the demand of 200,000 rides per month.
Unfortunately, I don’t think many of these new apps are aware of the myriad of problems introduced to the ridesharing industry by Austin’s new regulations, and I think they assume that Lyft and Uber were just trying to protect their bottom line. I don’t think Austin’s tech industry leaders were aware of the racial inequality embedded in these laws when they donated millions to Ride|Austin, the new “local”, “nonprofit” ridesharing company. I don’t think Austin’s Democratic Party was aware of the racial issues when they launched a campaign to stop Proposition 1. And I don’t think Austin voters knew when they went to the polls to “teach Uber a lesson” that they were empowering racially discriminatory practices.
What’s wrong with fingerprints?
Fingerprint-based background checks sound like a great idea, and in theory they are. The science is great, but our implementation of the fingerprint background check process in the U.S. is sorely broken.
Let’s use a hypothetical example. Meet Skyler, a young black man. Skyler was arrested 5 years ago when he was going to college in Chicago because officers thought he resembled a person they were searching for. He was taken to jail, his fingerprints were taken when he arrived, and he spent the rest of the exceptionally crummy night in his cell. The next morning, he was released with no charges pressed.
To me, this sounds like an improbable story. How often do police actually arrest the wrong person?
The US Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32% or 1 in three. Latino males have a 17% chance and white males have a 6% chance. Thus black boys are five times and Latino boys nearly three times as likely as white boys to go to jail. — “Fourteen Examples of Racism in Criminal Justice System” by Bill Quigley, Law Professor at Loyola University New Orleans
Skyler finished his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and decided to move to Austin, where he’ll begin doctoral studies at UT this Fall. To pass the time until the semester beings and to help get to know his new home, he’s signed up to drive with one of the new ridesharing apps in Austin. Skyler was instructed to get his fingerprints taken at one of 3 Austin Identogo locations, and Identogo sent copies of his prints to be checked against both the FBI’s database and Texas DPS’s database.
Although Federal law requires law enforcement agencies to keep those records up-to-date, they don’t. In fact, there’s a 50% chance that records in the FBI’s database are missing the disposition (the outcome — whether the person was innocent or guilty) for the case, and a 20% chance that the disposition is missing for cases in Texas DPS’s database.
Unfortunately, law enforcement never updated Skyler’s records with the outcome of his case. Identogo only knows that he had his prints taken that night. It is now his responsibility to get a statement from the courthouse in Cook County, Illinois, that shows that he’s innocent before he will have Austin’s blessing as a ridesharing driver. Will Skyler fly back to Chicago to get things straightened out so he can hit the road before the semester starts? How much will the travel cost him in time and money?
Why did Austin implement fingerprinting?
That’s a great question. Fingerprint-based background checks were one of several changes made by the City Council when they threw out the existing regulations in December. Just 4 days prior, the Transportation Research Board at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine weighed in on ridesharing policy.
“The committee was unable to find any careful empirical studies on the effectiveness of any of these methodologies [for background checks] with respect to passenger safety. Current practice, which strikes many as reasonable and prudent, is not evidence of best possible practice.”
— The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, Dec 2015
But hey, what do they know?
Austin’s first set of ridesharing regulations were written by a committee of volunteers in 2014. So well, in fact, that Lyft & Uber were able to provide some 200,000 rides per month and, although the media portrayed a different story, no Lyft or Uber driver in Austin was ever arrested, charged, or convicted for a sexual-assault-related crime.
However, some people weren’t happy with the ridesharing boom. Ann Kitchen, a CapMetro Board Member and CAMPO Board Member, accepted thousands in campaign contributions from Austin’s taxi industry and, along with fellow CapMetro Board Member Delia Garza, pushed hard for shackling down ridesharing with the same inefficient, broken, and sometimes racist regulations that have plagued the taxi and limo industries for years. Personally, I think most of the push for the new rules stemmed from the Transportation Department’s belief that ridesharing is no different from a taxi service with a fancy app. Perhaps they didn’t like how bus ridership was plummeting ahead of the UT Interlocal Agreement renewal date this fall? Perhaps they didn’t like how little control they had over the operations of Lyft and Uber?
Whatever the reason, there’s no excuse for introducing the U.S.’s flawed fingerprint-based background checks into the Ridesharing industry. Last month, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder got a bit bolder in his criticism of fingerprint-based background checks, but it will take much more than statements from former Obama cabinet members to uproot the weeds that we’ve let grow. It’ll take all of us to work together to create a climate of equality and justice in our cities instead of the old status quo. If you agree, please sign this statement of solidarity.
I pledge that I will not allow myself to be fingerprinted as a requirement to drive for a ridesharing service until there is at least one academic study that shows that it will make anyone even slightly safer than SSN-based background-checks. Until then, I will not drive for, nor ride with, a transportation service that is committed to fingerprint-based background checks for drivers.
Originally published at SkylarBuffington.com.
