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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

#101

Post by dang »

jmull wrote: post #99
dang wrote: post #96

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... . They keep discussion stuck in superficial and uninteresting places, and that's the opposite of what HN is for. Curious conversation means exchanging…

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.…

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 more interesting.

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

#104

Post by wutbrodo »

Nextgrid wrote: post #88
wutbrodo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

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

#105

Post by lucasyvas »

ThrowawayBandit wrote: post #9
lucasyvas wrote: post #2

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.

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.

I think perhaps it was the wrong choice of word - I didn't want to immediately condemn them and failed to come up with something more appropriate.

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

#106

Post by edanm »

dang wrote: post #101
jmull wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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…

> 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.

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

#107

Post by Fargren »

Glavnokoman wrote: post #86
Scarblac wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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.

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

#108

Post by 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.

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

#109

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #108

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.

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by mrcorona »

Isinlor wrote: post #85
sshumaker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a person of color in the US absolutely means you are confronting systemic racism throughout your life. So absolutely, yes, compared to white restaurant owners. Example: If you are black, you are less likely to get a small business loan, and if so you are likely to get worse rates [1]. They also are encountering more resistance to accessing COVID-19 bailout funds [2]. These are just two examples specific to bein…

Why would they single out black people out of all people of color and other disadvantaged groups? A lot of minorities are running restaurants.

>Why would they single out black people...

Black people are the least rewarded early investors in the startup we call the USA.

They have more right to be in this country than any group other than Native Americans, a large % are in fact descendants of native Americans but are not recognized as such due to a paper genocide and deportation program carried out by the govt of the US in the early 20th century.

No other minority group is in this position. Anyone who has studied the history knows the country still owes a tremendous outstanding debt to this group of people.

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