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Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

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Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#41

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?

It seems like you are finding it hard to understand what makes racism systemic, white restaurant owners are not an oppressed group, nobody is being racist against them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

Why do you assume only impact is on white restaurant owners?what about Asian, Mexican, Iranian, etc restaurant owners who are being charged a fee for delivery based only on their skin color?

Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#42
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.

Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#43
post #12

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

At a previous employer I once received a company-wide email from their operations manager about "fixing" their TrustPilot score (which was low and totally justified) and how he was encouraging us to leave reviews with our opinions "as a user" despite us being employees (I raised concerns but those fell on deaf ears).

I don't understand how an e-mail like that can even be written. Even if they don't follow through with the action, if that email were to leak it will become a (justified) PR disaster for the company (said company already had a PR disaster a few months before). I might expect a clueless intern to send it out, but not an experienced operations manager. Worse, none of the CS & marketing employees saw anything wrong with that and actually went ahead and posted reviews in their name.

Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 r…

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.

Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#45

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?

Please don't write inflammatory comments that spread misunderstanding and disinformation. I'm very skeptical of this move, its sustainability in the medium term, and I overall really dislike Uber as a business, but equality is NOT the point. Society is already unequal, you cannot wish it away with a magic wand. The way to address inequality, is to think in terms of equity: http://betterbikeshare.org/2019/10/24/equity…

I'm thinking in terms of equity, and it still seems pretty unfair that my local Mexican restaurants are being discriminated against.

Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#46

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?

Please don't write inflammatory comments that spread misunderstanding and disinformation. I'm very skeptical of this move, its sustainability in the medium term, and I overall really dislike Uber as a business, but equality is NOT the point. Society is already unequal, you cannot wish it away with a magic wand. The way to address inequality, is to think in terms of equity: http://betterbikeshare.org/2019/10/24/equity…

Seems like Uber is thinks black businesses are not capable of competing in a free market without a handout. Based on your definition, it is explicit racism.

Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#47

That's racist.

A more useful definition from So you want to talk about race: Racism is any prejudice against someone because of their race, when those views are reinforced by systems of power. This definition is useful in the sense that it helps focus efforts on what needs to be addressed - systemic racism - vs trying to convince 100% of individuals to stop being racists in their day-to-day.

This feels a bit too vague still though, because from all we know about the restaurant/delivery ecosystem it'd be fair to describe Uber Eats as a system of power over all involved restaurants, right?

Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#49

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 o…

Uber has been sending me invalid coupons through SMS for over a year now. A couple months ago I got fed up with it and decided to contact support, and they refused to even engage with the subject. I think it takes a lot to provide customer service worse than Google's, and they somehow managed to do it.

Re: Uber Eats removes delivery fee for Black-owned restaurants

#50

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

"Human rights lawyer?" That's an "interesting" euphemism for a tax lawyer.
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