What the hail was he thinking?
A black woman from Queens struck a blow for every African American ever ignored by a yellow cab when a judge fined a taxi hack $25,000 for turning her down to give two white passengers a ride.
Cynthia Jordan, 57, and her daughters were outside Macy’s in Herald Square nearly two years ago, trying to get to a birthday party when Baqir Raza locked his cab doors and insisted he was off duty.
But before Jordan could yell, “taxi,” again, Raza was putting out the welcome mat for two white women just 25 feet away, according to a Human Rights Commission report.
The fines issued last week were first reported by DNAinfo.com.
“Are you kidding me?” Jordan screamed at the driver after racing over to confront him. “You picked up these two … white b-----s … instead of me and my family. I’m going to report you.”
And report him she did, first to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, which fined Raza $200 after he pleaded guilty, then to the Commission on Human Rights, which took up the racial discrimination case.
Jordan said it wasn’t the first time she had run into discrimination. But what really troubled her was the look on her then 16-year-old daughter Bria’s face.
“I just wanted to let her know that you don't just have to just take it,” Jordan told the Daily News. “I've been taking it for years. It's not fair.”
Bria told The News she was proud of her mother for not backing down.
"I didn't know race mattered when it comes to cabs,” the daughter said. “It made me upset to see that.”
Administrative Law Judge Raymond Kramer said Raza showed “willful discrimination” against Jordan, an accounting executive at a stock transfer firm, and her family.
“Baqir Raza refused to transport Ms. Jordan and her daughters on the basis of their race and color,” Kramer wrote in the July 27 decision.
The judge recommended that Raza be ordered to pay $10,000 to Jordan and a $15,000 civil penalty, plus get anti-discrimination training.
"Discrimination against a taxi rider due to his or her race is unacceptable and a clear violation of the human rights law,” a commission spokeswoman said in a statement.
"Discrimination against a taxi rider due to his or her race is unacceptable and a clear violation of the human rights law,” a commission spokeswoman said in a statement.
Despite the initial guilty plea, Raza, 24, said he never turned Jordan and her daughters away. He said the white women simply jumped in his cab and he had no idea which passengers got to his cab first.
And he had some choice words for Jordan.
"She's the one being racist,” he said. “She called me a lowlife cabbie and those women white b-----s.
"She's the one being racist,” he said. “She called me a lowlife cabbie and those women white b-----s.
"She was using inappropriate language. I just drove off. I didn't want anything to do with this. She kicked my car."
Raza said he pleaded guilty, and accepted the fine because he thought that would be the end of it. He said he would appeal the Human Rights Commission decision.
Jordan said she regretted the slur against the women.
“That’s not language I normally use,” she told The News.
“That’s not language I normally use,” she told The News.
Jordan said her anger got the best of her.
I'm a black woman,” Jordan said. “I've lived in New York all my life. A cab passing you by, it happens all the time, It's not anything new.
“But what angered me most was his dismissiveness,” she said. “He looked at me like, what are you going to do, like I'm nothing."
