
Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants - daenz
https://twitter.com/UberEats/status/1268643816292020224
======
dang
All: I think it's time to note that semantic arguments about the word "racism"
are always the same and always turn nasty in the same way. That makes them
off-topic here, as are canned arguments in general:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22canned%20arguments%22&sort=byDate&type=comment).
They keep discussion stuck in superficial and uninteresting places, and that's
the opposite of what HN is for. Curious conversation means exchanging _new_
information.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
jmull
I respect your need to moderate discussions.

But there’s an effort to redefine racism to include any policy that
acknowledges race, as opposed to the normal definition that holds a policy is
racist if it promotes the superiority of one race over another.

Semantic arguments are bad when they obscure and distract from the central
point. But they are good when the distinction at issue is important to the
issue at hand. In this case, the distinction is critical. In a world where
widespread racism exists, but policies are not allowed to acknowledge race,
then policy cannot address racism, thus it continues.

> ...keep discussion stuck in superficial and uninteresting places...

 _Sigh_

Leaves me with so little hope. I guess we get to go around and around again on
all this.

~~~
dang
Sorry, and not to pick on you, but this is part of the going around in
circles. People have been making the exact same points for literally decades.
Combine that repetition with the superficiality and hair-triggerness of
internet discussion, and we get a recipe for tedious flamewar, which is
definitely off topic here.

It's part of the general principle about canned arguments. Intellectual
curiosity is all about diffs, and the diff between threads with canned
arguments and threads without them is significant. The latter are much better.

~~~
edanm
> Intellectual curiosity is all about diffs, and the diff between threads with
> canned arguments and threads without them is significant.

Setting aside the context for this discussion: I really love your way of
putting this. I've always looked at a lot of things that way - especially
reading non-fiction books. I read a lot, so I usually only take a way a few
key points from a book - but it's those diffs to how I viewed the world before
that are the important part.

------
bww
Setting aside the obvious PR opportunism, how would something like this
actually work? Does Uber currently collect data on the race of the people who
own restaurants they deliver from? Is data like this publicly available
somehow? Is this data something they're going to start collecting to
facilitate this feature? Does that sound like data it would be good for Uber
to have?

Knowing what we know about Uber this all seems highly problematic.

~~~
Nextgrid
I wonder how this will work from a legal point of view. This is a blatant,
obvious example of racism, they aren't even attempting to be subtle about it.

~~~
wutbrodo
It's effectively affirmative action, and there's a long history of legal
apologia for it.

In the final analysis, the law is interpreted by humans, and if a class of
violation (like racism) is popular enough, the system finds a way to excuse it
with hand-waving.

~~~
Nextgrid
Wouldn't defending such lawsuits still cost a lot of money though, even if you
end up winning?

~~~
wutbrodo
Maybe, assuming that the lawsuits didn't get dismissed. Small companies don't
have that much legal clout, and large companies are even more subject to the
whims of the mob (through PR) as the justice system.

------
kepler1
Well, this is somewhat meaningful in that they do something that actually
costs something. But the principle is wrong.

And, will they do this for other minorities when they suffer discrimination at
the hands of the state? How about poor people?

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating
on the basis of race."

------
lucasyvas
While a wonderful gesture, something about this feels a bit... tangential to
the real issue to me in a way that's distracting. Am I off base here? It feels
like it's leaning toward opportunistic.

~~~
ThrowawayBandit
How is that a wonderful gesture?

This is a corporate PR stunt that has nothing to do with anything and that
perpetuates racial discrimination.

This is awful.

~~~
henriquez
Our political establishment has no interest in ending racism; each "side"
benefits from dividing Americans into identity-based groups and pitting them
against other Americans on wedge issues. The hypocritical irony now is of
promoting these identity-based groups for the purposes of some vague "justice"
when doing so will necessarily widen the divides and propagate hatred further.
It's a cynical distraction from the reality that the actual institutionalized
racism predominantly occurs under the watchful leadership of the same
politicians decrying it, and then you have hangers on like Uber trying to
seize an issue for their own profit. It's as transparently self-serving as all
the companies changing their logo avatars to rainbows for "Pride Month" a year
ago, once it was politically risk-free to do so.

As one party to an interracial gay marriage I say "no thanks."

~~~
pphysch
Hear hear. Racism and other forms of idpol have been critical tools of the
political establishment in oppressing the working classes throughout American
history (see 1700s Virginia Slave Codes for an early example).

While bashing "bad" racism is politically correct, bashing "good" racism is
almost universally seen as taboo. Hence racism is immortal in America.

------
CyberDildonics
It is interesting to see the responses here as opposed to this thread where
pointing out that a company having diversity targets means they are explicitly
not hiring based on performance (not just measuring who they have hired based
on demographics of who has applied, and not mentioning race at all) ends up
with multiple people agreeing that I'm a 'racist bad person'

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23433335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23433335)

Reverse racism is a dull, simplistic and naive, and implementing it at the
business level is illegal and likely unhelpful on a systemic level, not to
mention that people don't spend their money based on the demographics of the
company who made a product. Race also isn't the only protected class, no one
seems to be mentioning women, people closer to retirement age or veterans.

I would be more impressed if uber set up offices in poorer areas regardless of
demographics or lobbied for schools to have more uniform funding regardless of
their neighborhood. Maybe they could have small business courses at their
offices or teach people about car maintenance.

------
kburman
What I don't understand how come ideas like this are generated and even passed
by the management?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Management just doesn't have any particular skill at not generating flagrantly
illegal ideas. I once saw a guy announce in a company-wide email that he was
leading an initiative to help the recruiting team bucket incoming applications
by gender. I strongly suspect that whoever approved this program is currently
being yelled at by their legal department.

~~~
bradleyjg
I don’t expect managers to know the law, I do expect them to check with those
that do.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
And responsible managers do. Unfortunately, many others conceptualize legal as
a department to help them fight the law rather than a department to help them
follow it.

~~~
jacobush
I don't think their move here is illegal. I think it's ill-advised, bad PR,
will backfire and probably predatory on the group they are ostensibly trying
to help. (Maybe even without them even understanding why.)

That all said, I was almost going to downvote your comment, but it made
remember how much Uber actually has made a business model out of breaking the
law in every country they are active in. Move fast and break things became
move fast and break the law.

~~~
Orou
> I don't think their move here is illegal.

This _seems_ illegal to me, but I really don't know. What are the laws
surrounding race-based company promotions/discounts?

~~~
bradleyjg
Here’s the Unruh Act which applies in California:

 _All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no
matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin,
disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual
orientation, citizenship, primary language, or immigration status are entitled
to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or
services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever._

------
anm89
How is this not illegal given the Civil rights act of 64? This seems like a
clear violation.

------
siruncledrew
How do companies find out personal details like race about who runs a business
(and actually do it accurately)?

Can they also find out things like religion or ethnicity?

Whether it’s corporate data collection or users checking a box, it seems like
a good intention that is primed for manipulation - which I guess some
companies might gloss over as long as it benefits them.

------
jungletime
If anyone is interested, here's an interview with a human rights lawyer Robert
Barnes, a man that has litigated wrongful death cases against police, and
supreme court cases.

Very pertinent, internal take on the courts, BLM, Antifa, police, Covid, and
current cases before the supreme court.

[https://youtu.be/6SSse90R72o?t=4021](https://youtu.be/6SSse90R72o?t=4021)

------
scarface74
I’m Black and I am very uneasy about this move. I can’t figure out why. I
think I would be more comfortable if they had some type of “economic
empowerment Zone” that just happened to cover majority/minority communities.
It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would just feel better to me.

------
devit
How do they know whether a restaurant is "black-owned"?

------
onei
I don't get how this solves anything, regardless of the legal or racist
accusations already discussed.

The aim is to surface black-owned restaurants. But the solution is to remove
the delivery for those restaurants. Do they have a filter for restaurants with
no delivery fee? Are they also tagging the restaurants to make it obvious
which are in this scheme?

Secondly, how do you determine which restaurants qualify? Is it just applied
to independent businesses or is it something larger chains can game as well?
It seems full of holes at the foundation.

The whole thing screams of a marketing department that think they should do
_something_ to make it look like they're supporting protests but put in the
tiniest amount of effort they could manage.

------
noxer
What if a white person is one of the shareholder of a restaurant run by
blacks? /s

------
kirykl
Actually Seems like predatory pricing targeting this one group to make these
businesses unfairly dependent on Uber Eats in a monopoly grab

~~~
searchableguy
A version of this is used in india to reduce wages. When you divide people
into two big groups and compensate one - you create unequal net wage - and if
there is not enough employment, one group hogs all the jobs while others have
to significantly reduce their wages to compete.

This is just capitalism in action.

------
maest
What constitutes as "black"?

------
alkibiades
is it even legal to have explicitly race-based policies like this? could a
company do the same thing for other race groups?

~~~
atlantacrackers
Expect class action suits to follow. What if you are losing business as a
restaurant because your competitors get free delivery?

------
Nextgrid
This is disgusting virtue-signaling from an awful company.

If Uber really wanted to help the Black community (and other minorities) how
about actually treating their delivery drivers (a lot of which come from low-
class backgrounds and part of minorities) fairly with decent wages and
benefits?

How about a fair, transparent fee structure? As others have pointed out, the
delivery fee is just _one_ of many fees, the rest of which are conveniently
hidden from the user and passed onto the restaurants which have no choice but
to pay them because Uber Eats is one of a handful of delivery services and
they're all equally scummy.

How about decent customer service that plays fair when things go wrong instead
of fobbing the customer off and hope they don't do a chargeback? (not many
people do which is why they get away with it)

~~~
tmpz22
I recommend all users of Uber eats and co read some of the large subreddits
for gig economy and uber eats workers on reddit. It’s pretty telling just how
awful these companies are... and though it’s still relatively new these
announcements for affirmative action are leading to a lot of pushback that
some would identify as hurting the cause rather then helping it.

------
SpicyLemonZest
I respect what they're going for here, but an explicitly race-based discount
seems very illegal.

~~~
Yetanfou
I don't respect what they're going for here since what they're actually doing
is trying to put a shine on their decrepit corporate image by virtue
signalling.

------
newbie578
How is this supporting the current situation, when this is a literal example
of racism?

People don't need or DESERVE special treatment, be it negative or positive,
people deserve to be treated as equal.

I don't understand why is it so hard to fathom?

~~~
Fargren
The definition of racism is not treating a race different from others. Racism
is a belief that one race is better or worse than others, and the politics
that arise from that belief. Recognizing that a group has been treated
unfairly and compensating for it is not racism.

~~~
Scarblac
Strictly speaking racism is the view that different races of human even exist.

~~~
Glavnokoman
Yay! I am a racist then. And you go tell the black guys they do not exist.

~~~
Fargren
I think the point Scarblac was trying to make is that by the biological
definition of race, there is only one human race, and all human belong to it.
We have historically said that Black people, White people, Asian people,
whatever, belong to different races, but that's not accurate and it is that
error that lets racist ideas (in the discriminatory sense) to exist. Those
"race" categorizations have no basis in biology and have shown to be flexible
over time. A hundred years a go, an Irish person would not have been
considered white, and a Spanish person might have. Today the Irish man is
white, and the Spaniard might be called a Latin.

I think it's better to say that race exists, but it's a cultural construct,
not a biological reality. It's clear that in the USA the largest part of
people with black or dark brown skin color have a shared history and culture
that comes from the capture of native African population. They clearly have
something in common, and they exist as a group. The term "race" is
problematic, but it's the best one we have.

------
nicc
After "fight fire with fire", through awful virtue signalling comes "fight
racism with racism".

Nice move, Uber!

~~~
catalogia
I know it's just an expression, but that has always bugged me. Fighting fire
with fire is a legitimate firefighting technique (controlled burns.) Red Adair
even fought fire with explosions.

------
mydongle
Perfect. Now racists can know exactly which businesses to avoid buying from,
thus hurting their businesses.

------
renw0rp
how is that not consider 'racist'?

------
hn_throwaway_99
As many others have said:

1\. At least in the US, this is quite blatantly illegal. Uber Eats is not
stupid, they know this. Whether you take the charitable view (Uber knows this
but they wish to push back against historical and systemic racism) or the
uncharitable view (this is a bare virtue signaling ploy), Uber Eats is betting
they what they get from doing this is worth more than eventually having to
stop or get sued.

2\. Personally, as someone who strongly supports the BLM movement, I find this
beyond stupid. It doesn't solve the problem at hand, and it just plays into
the further division of society that the right wing has played so masterfully
into fomenting.

------
jmull
Comments here show a lot of people don’t really know what racism is.

Now is an important time to learn, so please read.

Racism if the belief that race is the basis for determining that one group of
people is _superior_ to another group.

Specifically, it is NOT acknowledging that their are differences in the
circumstances and opportunities people have based on race. Nor, _necessarily_
, treating people differently based on acknowledging those differences.

Regarding Uber Eats... this policy isn’t racist simply because it treats
black-owned restaurants differently.

Lesson over. The rest is just my opinion.

Uber eats’ policy it is divisive. It’s also tone-deaf (how does this help
black people in their struggle to be treated like everyone else?). And —- I
can’t know for sure from the information I have —- but I suspect racism lead
to this poorly conceived policy, because of how divisive it is and how
condescending it feels.

~~~
wutbrodo
While narrowly correct, this barely rises above the level of pedantry. As I'm
sure you're aware, racism is in common use as a short form for "racial
discrimination", of which this is uncontroversially an example. Unless you
object to white nationalist separatists being called racists, on grounds that
wanting a separate white homeland doesn't require any belief in racial
superiority? (Or the more mundane form, people who want their neighborhoods to
be their own race and oppose race-mixing)

This isn't the fact-check "lesson" you think it is; it just pedantic apologia
for racial discrimination that shows your own narrow understanding of the
situation more than anything else.

~~~
jmull
Wow.

No surprise racism is as strong and prevalent as ever.

You will continue to be mystified and confused about why people are as upset
as they are if you refuse to understand what the issue actually is.

Let's just start with the first thing: the idea that white nationalists
separatists do not view white people as superior is nonsensical on its face.

> This isn't the fact-check "lesson" you think it is; it just pedantic
> apologia for racial discrimination that shows your own narrow understanding
> of the situation more than anything else.

I am sad you see it this way. We've got a long way to go. Just try to open up
your mind a little. I feel you have the potential or you would not have even
responded.

~~~
wutbrodo
> No surprise racism is as strong and prevalent as ever

Funny, I feel the same way about your comment. The regressive, dehumanizing
impulse most people have to squash everyone into "black guy" or "Asian woman"
instead of "full human being whose life can't be reductively captured by their
skin color or genitals" is at the root of both old-fashioned racism and the
newfangled form you're so enthusiastic about.

> the idea that white nationalists separatists do not view white people as
> superior is nonsensical on its face.

I'd imagine the overlap is significant with white supremacists, yes. But
racial-/ethnonationalists of every race and ethnicity exist, and they're not
all supremacists. There's a memeplex out there that races shouldn't mix that's
decoupled from any notion of superiority: for anyone not rightly ensconced in
their bubble it's not very difficult to come across this in the wild in, eg,
the black community. I'm assuming you don't think that every African-American
or Japanese or Indian or Arab or Burundian racial essentialist also thinks
that they happen to be the master race? If not, it seems absurd to conclude
that whites are the one race for whom this belief exists but _never_ among
people who doesn't also believe in racial supremacy.

(For what it's worth, I'm pretty opposed to racial separatism, but I'm not
ignorant enough to think that it's the same thing as white supremacy. There's
a difference between modern Japan and the Third Reich's views on race)

~~~
jmull
> newfangled form you're so enthusiastic about

I am not redefining racism. Just look it up. Superiority based on race.
Merriam-Webster:

: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities
and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular
race

I’m not going to post a link. Just type racism into your favorite search
engine. You’ve got to decide if you want to learn or not.

> I'm assuming you don't think that every African-American or Japanese or
> Indian or Arab or Burundian racial essentialist also thinks that they happen
> to be the master race?

Yes, people who are not white can be racist.

> There's a difference between modern Japan and the Third Reich's views on
> race)

Absolutely. It’s not like Nazi Germany owned a patent on racism. It could, and
does, exist in Japan.

