Years ago, I was helping someone move apartments and we took
a cab. We were calling for gypsy cabs as this was in uptown Manhattan where it
was difficult to hail a cab. The driver had zero English. Even when my friend wrote
the address on a piece of paper and handed it to him, he thought he was going
to 124th Street because the number of the building address was 124.
He called his dispatcher on his cell phone and him interpret this address.
We don’t expect everyone to speak the King’s English in New
York—what native New Yorkers speak is far from the King’s English—but driving
a cab or working with the public in this town in any official capacity should
require English and until recently that was the case for having a license to
drive a cab (colloquially known as a “hack license.”)
New York City taxi drivers are no longer required to pass an
English language proficiency test. This regulation had been on the books for a
while but not stringently enforced. Ask any New Yorker who has taken cabs in
the city regularly and they have had drivers with little or no English. Now
it’s just official.
And it’s a bad idea. We don’t have a lot of things that hold
us together here in New York or America anymore for that matter. If we’re going
to perish in a suicidal cultural bouillabaisse, then I guess descending into a
hellish Babel is part of the deal. But the interest of public safety can’t be
abandoned so quickly and recklessly.
What’s motivating this in New York is not a lack of drivers
who are willing to learn English, but the medallion cab companies losing
drivers to startup hailing app companies like Uber and Lyft. It’s not a matter
of public policy or politicians’ hearts breaking for destitute non-English
speakers, but the cold hard cash that fuels what remains of our “democracy.”
It’s amazing that you can get a driver’s license in the
U.S.A. without knowing English, but at least let make sure that those who drive
other people professionally know the language. New Yorkers come from every part
of the globe and whatever your opinions of our current immigration question, most
people agree that people who live and work together need to know the same
language.
Technology that’s shaking up the taxi industry will enable
drivers who are restricted in language to only deal with clientele they can
communicate with. Since you can order any kind of vehicle to pick you up with a
ride-sharing mobile application, you can also specify that language proficiency
of your driver. Thus the balkanization of theU.S. is advanced further, and all in the name of helping and fairness.
I have never been a frequent user of cabs but in my days of
hard drinking and late nights that became early mornings, I would take a cab.
Since most cab drivers in New York are from other countries, I enjoyed speaking
to them about where they were from and learning about what was going on in the
world from people who had a closer connection to it.
New York has survived for hundreds of years in part because
people have learned to work with one another despite enormous differences. A
common language makes that possible.
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