printSo I wrote in a column so titled on June 2, 2006:
“According to the authors of ‘Streetwise: How Taxi Drivers Establish their Customer’s Trustworthiness’ (TLS, May 12), it transpires that in deciding whether to ‘stop for a fare,’ cabbies give preference to ‘whites’ over ‘blacks.’ But they also select older over younger passengers; women over men; individuals over multiple passengers, wealthier over poorer; callers over hailers; and ‘friendly and calm over aggressive and agitated.’ As it is in the taxi driver’s economic interest to refuse ‘as few fares as possible, they can no more be guilty of racism than they are of reverse sexism or ageism because they prefer older and female passengers,’ say the authors.”
“Since there is no way of knowing whether those passengers the drivers screened out were in fact dangerous, it’s difficult to assess the effectiveness of these strategies. Still, not even the most ardent rights-violator would dare suggest cabdrivers be penalized for their prudence. For one, it could cost the driver his life.”
And it did. “Chilling video released yesterday by police shows a life-and-death struggle between a gunman and livery driver moments before the thug shot the cabby in a botched robbery in Queens.
The dramatic confrontation was caught on a surveillance camera installed in the gold Chevy Impala being driven by Trevor Bell, 53, in South Ozone Park on Saturday night. Bell was critically wounded in the attack. …”
“The head of the New York State Federation of Taxi drivers is encouraging racial profiling,” reports ABC.COM:
“Sometimes it’s good that we are racially profiled, because the honest to God truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics,’ Fernando Mateo said.”
The law, of course, proscribes the life-preserving measures advised by Mr. Mateo. These poor cabbies are expected to throw open the cab door to the Grim Reaper himself.
UPDATE: As you can see, Mateo, the man advocating racial (or rational) profiling, is a member of a minority as well. The victim, I believe, is black
It seems that if one is to be a respected and accepted member of our modern society then one must be an absolute fool. Profiling is and always has been the best first impression of a stranger. We are expected to keep a blind eye to the obvious as we worship at the altar of the oblivious and risk our lives in order not to offend the fools who set the agenda for our culture. What a revolting development.
My late Uncle Jack was a retired Washington, D.C. homicide detective. He was involved in the investigation of the Orlando Letelier assassination. Ditto for the Hanafi Muslim murders.
Years ago I asked him how many murders he investigated.
He responded, “Over 800 and over 1,100 deaths altogether.”
I then asked him how many of the murders involved whites as victims.
He replied, “Eleven.”
Think about this for a moment.
He was a homicide detective decades ago. It was when D.C. still had a large white population. Yet only 11 out of over 800 murders involved whites as victims.
I leave it up to the reader to figure out the rest.