My Uber Rating Is 4.63

My Uber passenger rating is 4.63, which is pretty low. We will get to that in a moment.

Back in 1998, I moved to Walnut Creek, CA. I was an avid runner back then, and I had gone for a long run on a back road. It was the summer, and it was hot, so I took my shirt off. A car goes whizzing by me, and some guy sticks his head out the window and yells, “NO MEXICANS!”

I looked all around for the Mexicans. There were none. Oh, he’s talking about me!

I am not, in fact, Mexican. But I look Mexican. I am very tan. When my wife and I vacation in Mexico, actual Mexicans speak Spanish to me. They get very confused when I tell them that I only speak English.

In 2001, we moved into a condo in New Jersey. It was a new building, and there was a long punch list of things that needed to be fixed. They sent two actual Mexicans to work on our apartment: Smiley and Victor. Smiley never said anything, but he did smile a lot; Victor was the talkative one. And he kept speaking Spanish to me, and was dumbfounded that I couldn’t answer. He asked my wife what the hell was wrong with me. He was determined to teach me my native language. He used to speak Spanish verrrry slooowly so that I would understand. He never gave up.

This shit happens to me all the time. Even just a few months ago, I was at Frank’s in Pawleys Island, and one of the waiters came up to me to tell me what a great job I was doing.

“On what?” I asked.

“Your restaurant,” he said.

“What restaurant?”

“Sol,” he said. It was the Mexican restaurant. Not again.

But it’s not just Mexican. Greek people think I am Greek. When I went to Greece last summer, Greeks would speak Greek to me. When I wouldn’t answer, they would speak Spanish. When I still wouldn’t answer, they would speak English. Over the years, people have mistaken me for Middle Eastern, Armenian, Native American, Italian, Argentinian, Brazilian, Puerto Rican, even African-American. I am none of these things. 23&Me says that I am mostly a mutt, but 68% British and Irish. I am a tiny bit peninsular Arab and Native American, along with about 14% Southern European. Maybe that explains the dark complexion. People look at me and they see what they want to see.

The interesting thing about all of this is that I have a tiny window into what it must be like to experience racism, in subtle and unsubtle ways. On a trip to Mexico, I sat down in a lounge area with a white couple. He heard me and my wife speaking English, and he says, “Oh, I thought you were Mexican.”  Then he corrects himself. “I mean Spanish.”  Then he corrects himself again. “I mean sophisticated Spanish.”  Facepalm.

And then there are the times that I go to hail a cab, the cab slows down to about five miles per hour, the driver leans out, looks at me, and speeds away. This has happened to me a handful of times. Yes, I occasionally have difficulty hailing a cab.

Uber is a different story, because they have to pick you up. Believe me when I tell you that I am a model citizen in the back of an Uber. I don’t slam the door. If the driver wants to talk, I’ll talk, if he doesn’t, I won’t. I won’t roll down the window. I don’t make phone calls. I sit there silently for the duration of the ride, get out, leave a tip, and then…one star, and my rating goes even lower. I am being rated on the basis of my appearance.

If I were a sociology PhD, I would definitely be doing research on Uber driver and passenger ratings. Because I believe a lot of it is motivated by racism. And the drivers can give you pretty much whatever rating they want, without consequence. If you want to give a driver anything less than a 5-star rating, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops on the app. It is worst when I am in New York. I seem to consistently get one-star ratings from South Asian Uber drivers. I’m not sure what they think I am, but it’s nothing good.

I could bury you in an avalanche of anecdotes, like the time I went to a restaurant in California in 2012, and the owner came out, put his hands on his hips, and glared at me, expecting me to leave. I have experienced actual racism because of my appearance.

But on the other hand, I have experienced affirmative action. When I was applying for a job at Lehman Brothers in 2000, my contact at the firm once asked me, “You’re some kind of ethnic, aren’t you?”  I was truthful and told him no, but to this day, I have always wondered if I got the job at Lehman because I was a diversity hire. Now, that is mind blowing, and amazing, and terrible. But then again, I have about 10 times more Native American DNA than Elizabeth Warren, so what the hell?

The interesting thing about the occasional racism I experience is that I have the ability to laugh it off and go about my day, because ultimately, I am white. If I were a minority, and I had to deal with this shit day after day, it would get old. It would be beyond frustrating. And I would probably have a bad attitude. I would probably be angry pretty much all the time. I’m not talking about microaggressions—people ask me all the time what my background is, and I’m happy to have that conversation. But not being able to get a cab is a different story. These are the conversations that people were having in the early 90s.

I don’t much fit in in the South, either. When we first moved to South Carolina, we moved to Conway, which is a small town about 15 miles inland from Myrtle Beach. It is culturally very different from Myrtle Beach. It is The South. I was like the piece of broccoli in the General Tso’s chicken. The thing about The South is that you’re not going to get the boneheaded comments like you will elsewhere—people are unfailingly polite. But I didn’t get invited to any barbecues, either. It’s parochialism, is what it is. In Seattle, they have a name for it—they call it the Seattle “Freeze,” where outsiders can’t get jobs or opportunities. They don’t have a name for it in the South, but I have my own business and I’m self-sufficient, so I don’t really need anyone for anything, anyway.

As for the Uber ratings, I am pretty much sick of being shit on by drivers at this point. And recently, I stopped tipping, because I would tip people and then get a 1-star rating. And no, tipping doesn’t get you a better rating—the drivers don’t find out if you have tipped until after they have rated you. A friend of mine has a 4.95 Uber rating. He is an investment banker and looks like Patrick Bateman. Of course. And girls get higher ratings, too. Not dour-looking brown guys that are covered in tattoos. I think if someone were to dig into the ratings with some actual academic research we would discover some ugly truths about humanity.

Go fuck yourself,

Jared

Music recommendation: No music today. I want you to come out to a club and watch me DJ.

On Friday, September 16th, I’m throwing a party at Doux Supper Club in NYC. Lots of great music, lots of fun. Tickets are $25. Hope to see you there.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cosmic-prom-feat-stochastic-tickets-389756400887

P.S. We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards will always be free. Feel free to forward to whoever you like.