The other day I saw a young black man on the corner of 32nd Street and 6th Avenue with his arm up, trying to hail a cab. He wasn’t particularly well dressed, but he didn’t look like a hoodlum (the same could have been said of me). “How many empty cabs are going to pass him by before one stops?” I wondered.
The answer: three.
When I was first working in Manhattan, just north of Union Square, a colleague and I had an appointment at the World Financial Center, down near the WTC. He's a black guy, son of a cop, actually. We were both dressed in business suits at 5th and 18th. He got to the curb first. Two cabs blew by. I joined him, raised my hand.
The next cab stopped.
I'd never seen this happen, so my jaw-dropped. He shrugged. "You get used to it."