[pessimizer]

I'm a black man who lives in Chicago, and rarely have trouble getting a cab, dodged by maybe 1 in 10. In an Uber world where the cab companies have been driven out of business, and captured city governments allow taxi services to regulate themselves (like Uber and Lyft are asking for), people who don't have smartphones might as well start walking now. Or they can call the fly by night unregulated services that will operate in their neighborhoods by phone, and have the equivalent of surge pricing 24h a day. Or hail unmarked gypsy cabs and maybe end up dead.

I've been black all over America, often not hardly middle-class, the [edit: taxi] situation is not that dire in the 21st century, and Uber are not civil rights workers - you still have to find one that will go where you live.

edit: Not that I don't believe that your neighborhood was particularly racist, but I'll put our Chicago racists against anyone else's racists. I think the largely immigrant workforce driving taxis (especially Nigerians) are more likely to pick me up out of affinity than one might think.