[dbg31415]

So look, Austin is a small town, and people are on the whole very friendly. It's very jarring to be treated rudely by someone who doesn't bother hiding the fact that they are trying to milk you for all you're worth to them... however they have to drag the trip out they will. Driving slow, pretending to miss exits, pretending they don't hear you when you ask them to go different routes... it's infuriating.

[karmajunkie]

Yeah dude, I hear ya. That sucks, and I'm as pissed as you probably are that Lyft and Uber pulled out.

But that doesn't mean your statement was any less racist and xenophobic for it.

[Sacho]

What's the principle difference between denying former convicted felons a job as a taxi driver, and denying outsiders because they are "unfriendly, rude, difficult to communicate"? They both make broad assumptions, which might even be generally correct.

[karmajunkie]

Felons, by definition, are found to have committed some act which marks them as part of the class. Leaving aside for the sake of answering your question the unjust aspects of American jurisprudence which distort that process of a guilty verdict, a member of the class has essentially (again, in theory) joined it voluntarily.

The same is not true of "outsiders". It is a racist and xenophobic presumption that an immigrant will be unfriendly, rude, or difficult to communicate with, and that natural-born citizens will not be.

[Sacho]

> It is a racist and xenophobic presumption that an immigrant will be unfriendly, rude, or difficult to communicate with, and that natural-born citizens will not be.

You have in front of you the following information: "outsiders" are not more likely to be unfriendly, rude or difficult to communicate with("unfriendly" from now on). Former felons are also not more likely to be unfriendly. Under your analysis, it's racist and xenophobic to presume that a given outsider will be unfriendly, but it is not a problem to make the same assumption about a felon.

I think slapping the labels "racist" and "xenophobe" belies the actual dynamics of human interaction. Even a "racist" does not hate all members of a race equally - a polite, friendly "outsider" could be treated as separate from the "outsider" group. The only meaningful distinction in this bigotry is that we've decried one as evil, and for the other, we feel justified. The information before us is the same, it's only our feelings that force us to rationalize a distinction.

[karmajunkie]

You're conflating the rationale for the exclusion of those separate subgroups. Felons are not excluded for being "unfriendly" (agreeable shorthand). They are excluded because of a (perceived) risk to public safety, demonstrated by their conviction for criminal behavior.[1] To make a similar claim about foreign-born residents would be even more flagrantly xenophobic and racist than merely calling them unfriendly.

[1] Keeping in mind that especially for non-violent and non-vehicular convictions I don't buy into the whole "felons are bad, mmmkay" business, nor the argument that felons chose to exclude themselves from civil society by their own actions, but that's not the discussion we're having.