Cabbie Refuses to Pick Up Black Exec, She Fights Back

For Cynthia Jordan, a 57-year-old vice president at a stock transfer firm in New York, it was just another day when a taxi driver refused to let her, a black woman, ride. Except Jordan was with her two daughters on Oct. 19, 2013, and when she saw the look on her then-16-year-old's face, she says she lost it. "I just wanted to let her know that you don't just have to just take it," she tells the New York Daily News. "I've been taking it for years. It's not fair." So Jordan argued her case not just before the city Taxi and Limousine Commission, which issued a $200 slap on the wrist, but the city's Commission on Human Rights as well. And while the commission has yet to approve it, Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings Judge Raymond Kramer ruled in late July that taxi driver Baqir Raza must pay $10,000 to Jordan and a $15,000 civil fine, reports DNAinfo.com.

According to Jordan, she and her two daughters, who live in Queens, were trying to hail a cab in front of Macy's in Midtown when Raza, who is 24, allegedly locked his doors and said he was off duty. He then drove 25 feet up the road and let in two white females, so Jordan ran after him. "Are you kidding me?" she said. "You picked up these two … white b-----s … instead of me and my family. I’m going to report you." To which Raza allegedly replied, "Yeah, go ahead and report me." He initially pleaded guilty but plans to appeal the decision, saying Jordan is "the one being racist" and that she kicked his car. Jordan says she regrets calling the women a name but had simply had enough: "You don't have impunity," she says of Raza. (On a lighter note, check out how Tom Hanks treated this cabbie.)