03/18/2008
The famous Youtube clip of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright includes this:
“ Folks are hatin’ on Barack Obama. He doesn’t fit the mold, he ain’t white, he ain’t privileged. Hillary fits the mold. Europeans fits the mold. Giuliani fits the mold. Rich, white men fit the mold. Hillary never had a cab whiz past her and not pick her up because her skin is the wrong color."[Transcript at Chicago’s 560 AM WIND]
Obama actually is privileged, having attended Punahou Prep School in Hawaii, and being the second generation of his family to go to Harvard. Hillary and Rudy both attended public schools, and while Rudy’s parents never split up, they were separated briefly while Rudy’s father was in Sing Sing.
But the Reverend is right that a taxicab would probably consider it safe to pick up Hillary Clinton, since middle-aged white women commit very few crimes of violence, whereas black criminals have killed more cab drivers than left turns.[See Myth Of The Racist Cabbie, an excerpt from Dinesh D’souza’s book, The End Of Racism] The last time this came up was when Barack Obama claimed he couldn’t get a taxi in New York because of prejudice, and that this made him "authentically black." Ann Coulter did a column called Obama Hails A Unicornin which she pointed out the danger of death to drivers who pick up the wrong passengers, and also said that sometimes she can’t get picked up on Fifth Avenue:
…. the driver displayed a scar across his neck, a souvenir from a black customer who had robbed him. “I have to choose which is worse,” the driver said, “a fine or death.” Thanks to Rudy Giuliani, cab drivers in New York no longer have to make that choice. Under his mayoralty, New York City became a lot safer for cab drivers — and everyone else. The murder rate went from about 2,000 murders a year under Mayor David Dinkins to about 700 by the end of Giuliani’s term. The last time a cab driver was killed in New York was in 1997. In addition to making it safer for (mostly African-American and Muslim) cabbies to pick up African-Americans, Giuliani made it costly for them not to. He started “Operation Refusal” in 1999, sending out teams of black undercover cops and taxi commissioners to hail cabs and give fines to those who refused to pick up blacks.
Even back in 1999, in the first 12 hours of “Operation Refusal,” out of more than 800 cabs hailed, only five cab drivers refused to pick up a customer — one of whom was a white woman with children. And by the way, I’ve had dozens of cabs refuse to stop for me on Fifth Avenue. Sometimes they forget to turn on the “off duty” light, or they’re daydreaming or maybe they’ve read my columns on Muslims.
So if a cute blonde in a miniskirt can’t get a cab on Fifth Avenue, maybe Hillary has seen cabs whiz off without picking her up. The other reason cabdrivers aren’t enthusiastic about picking up African-American passengers is a widespread belief that African-Americans are lousy tippers. This has been verified by social scientists with way too much time on their hands. Going just by stereotypes, I'd say that an ambitious young politician would be an excellent tipper. Going by similar stereotypes, I suspect a radical clergyman would be a lousy tipper, and both of these last two are cross-racial stereotypes.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.