When Adeola Animashaun gets behind the wheel of his taxi in the morning to start another day, he leaves behind a wife who wonders if he will survive to supper time.
”I don`t even know if you`ll be coming back home,” she sometimes tells him.
Like the spouse of a police officer or a soldier, the wife or husband of a cabdriver lives every working day with uncertainty and dread.
And, like an officer or a soldier, the cabdriver relies on experience and instinct to survive.
For Animashaun, that means he must make a difficult decision. Reluctantly but regularly, he will pass up black men, even though he is from Nigeria, and even though he knows he is being unfair to the black men he overlooks.
”As a black man, it really makes me feel bad because here are my fellow brothers out there trying to get to where they`re going,” he said.
But he believes he has good reasons.
”The only protection cabdrivers have is their intuition of who they think is gonna hurt them or who is not,” said Animashaun, who lives in Lansing and is studying political science at Northeastern Illinois University. ”There are brothers that are hurting black people. It`s black-on-black crime, and it`s real stupid.”
Just as his code of survival sometimes supplants any pangs of regret, it supersedes the city code that says cabbies can be fined or suspended for passing by a fare.
Despite the potential penalties, though, the practice described by Animashaun is commonplace.
It discriminates against the vast majority of African-Americans who aren`t armed or dangerous, merely stuck in the rain or late for an
appointment.
The result is yet another daily slight experienced by many blacks-and an example of the indirect way the city`s high crime rate shapes the lives of all citizens.
But, because they must navigate the city`s treacherous avenues unarmed and vulnerable, many cabbies say they have no choice but to screen passengers in some manner.
Six Chicago cabbies have been killed in what has been a particularly violent year. Five taxi drivers were killed on duty last year, according to police.
White men are suspected in one of the cabbie killings this year. In the others, black men have been arrested or are suspected. In three of the six homicides, robbery appears to be the motive.
Think of a deserted convenience store on a darkened corner. Now think of a store that has no video camera, no armed security and a cashier whose back is constantly to the customer.
It is not hard to see why cabbies have been popular with robbers over the years. And the drivers say it is getting worse.
”It`s ridiculous out there,” said Phil Osborne, who has been driving a cab for 12 years but is thinking of giving it up for a safer line of work.
Until then, like other drivers, he has an unwritten screening policy.
”If it`s not a person my age, and I`m 40, I`m gonna look them over two or three times before I pick them up,” he said.
The screening process varies from driver to driver.
Ocie Jones, who has been driving a cab for 34 years, says you have to
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”judge character.” If the person hailing the cab doesn`t look Jones in the eye, he or she becomes suspect. A bulky coat in summer, which could be concealing a weapon, is another warning signal.
In these situations, rather than risk it, Jones will just drive by.
Jones, who is black, said he does not base his decision solely on race or sex. The first of the three times he was robbed was by two white men. He has had friends robbed by women.
As for the man dressed for success, you can`t automatically trust him, either, Jones says.
”The suit don`t mean anything,” he said. ”It`s the one in the suit that`ll get you.”
It would require a finely tuned intuition to judge character from behind a windshield. And some cabdrivers with less experience than Jones or less confidence in their instincts draw simpler distinctions.
”I don`t go to the South Side,” said Kamran Yousuf, a driver for the last 1 1/2 years. He said he also avoids ”some black people” who look
”rough.”
Asked the type of passenger he wouldn`t allow in his cab, a black driver with more than a decade of experience answered with three words: ”young black men.”
A Mexican driver who only started driving six months ago said he, too, has some simple rules. ”First of all, I only work mornings,” he said.
”And, of course, I have to discriminate some people.”
He won`t pick up black men or women unless they appear to be dressed for work.
He is not proud that he does this, but considers it a matter of self-preservation. ”I prefer not to, but you have to do it,” he said.
Alexander Strickland, president of Concerned Cab Drivers of the City of Chicago, an advocate for better working conditions, said drivers need to take special precautions because they are so vulnerable to attack from behind.
”I would say limit the number of passengers in the cab and where you pick them up,” he said. ”You wouldn`t put two men in back of you. Two black men in back of you, forget it.”
Strickland, a black who has driven cabs for seven years, said that when the issue is life and death other feelings become secondary. He acknowledged that the side effect of such practices is to punish many blacks who are not criminals.
”Unfortunately the good will have to suffer with the bad,” he said.
There would appear to be only one reason that Simeon Newbold, 37, a deacon who is studying to be a priest, is passed over frequently by cabdrivers on the South Side: He is a black male.
Even African-American cabbies have bypassed him.
”As a person who has accomplished a certain degree of achievement in his life, I find it an insult,” he said. ”I don`t rob people. I wasn`t brought up that way.”
Yet he finds it difficult to condemn the apparent racism that makes it harder for him to get a cab than a white counterpart.
”I can understand the cabbies,” he said, ”because a lot them are being murdered by young African-American males. So it`s a dilemma which I struggle with from within.”
As a former cabbie, Earnest Bryant, 46, a mid-level manager for the American Medical Association, also has empathy for the drivers. It helps him cope with the sting of bias he has experienced trying to hail a cab.
If he is dressed in a business suit, he has no problem getting a cab downtown. But if he is downtown on a weekend dressed in shorts or other casual attire, it`s a different story.
”I can walk from here to my destination without getting a cab,” he said. And a driver who does stop for him is most likely to be black, he said. Ten years ago, he worked as a cabdriver for about six months. Those were safer times, he said.
”Now it`s a totally different situation,” Bryant said. ”I can understand their reluctance. Sometimes I think it`s prejudice and sometimes I don`t. Reluctantly I say this: I can`t blame some of the drivers.”
Cornell Andersen, a black woman who drives a cab, tried to do what she thought was the right thing a few weeks ago after seeing three black teenagers passed by one night by other drivers.
”I really felt sorry for them,” she said. So she stopped.
When they changed their mind about their destination, Andersen grew leery and asked them to pay the fare in advance. They refused, and she stopped the cab.
Andersen said the youths got out and retaliated for her good intentions by throwing bricks at the taxi. When she left the cab to shut a door they had left open, they threw bricks at her too, she said.
In her eight years of driving a cab, Andersen said, she has been shot at twice. Both times she was saved with the aid of bulletproof shields that separated the driver from the passenger. Those shields have since been removed, though Strickland, other drivers and some aldermen are saying they are needed again.
”I had constant nightmares,” Andersen said. ”As a matter of fact, it was so bad that sometimes I would jump straight up in the bed because I could see people in my back seat with guns and stuff. It was just really pathetic.” Frances Hal, a dispatcher for Jiffy Cab Co., tries to mix prayer and prudence in keeping her co-workers safe. In August her longtime companion, Ozias Austin, 54, was fatally shot while working on the South Side.
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”I pray for all of `em, honey,” she said. ”To me, when they`re out there, it`s like Russian roulette.”