Recently, I took an Uber ride from the Memphis community of Oakhaven to go to the YMCA in Southaven, Miss.
My car was in the shop, and I had already missed a scheduled workout to help me knock off quarantine and snowstorm pounds, so I relented.
But after my workout, I couldn't get back home.
I tried to summon an Uber three times. And three times it tried to confirm a driver and couldn't. Couldn't get an Economy, or any of the two other more expensive rides. If it had not been for a kindly woman who was leaving the gym with her kids and took pity on me and drove me home, I would be stuck with an expensive cab ride.
But now, I have questions.
Were all the Southaven Uber drivers that busy on a Wednesday night? No big event was going on? Are there too few Uber drivers in Southaven to go around? Or did they just not want to go into Memphis, a mostly-Black city which struggles with crime - and with a lot of poverty they might not have if this Mississippi suburb didn't siphon off so many business incentives and other resources to build its tax base at Memphis' expense?
I don't know.
But this Atlantic article gives a helluva clue as to what the answer might be.
And the ignorance never stops...
