LONDON — There is one question that bothers Sahrab Shinwari: “Would they have banned Uber if its drivers had been white and English?”

The shock decision last month to strip Uber of its London license has been rippling across the British capital, animating conversations at all layers of London life — about Uber’s convenient and cheap service in a market long dominated by iconic but pricey black cabs; about the company’s flawed track record in corporate governance; and about the kind of capitalism Britain wants after the “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union last year.

But at street level, the city was buzzing with more uncomfortable questions — like the one that troubled Mr. Shinwari, himself an Uber driver who came to London from Afghanistan nine years ago. He is one of the company’s 40,000 drivers in London. Most of them are nonwhite and many of them immigrants, something which has sharpened racial divisions in the working class at a time when incomes at the bottom are squeezed, and the city’s post-Brexit future is still uncertain.

Uber has already appealed the decision and the company’s new chief executive is arriving on Tuesday for a peacemaking mission. But the ride-hailing service’s fate has resonated so deeply in London because it has disrupted more than transportation. It has disrupted politics, too, surfacing hypocrisies and fraying the social fabric of this proudly cosmopolitan city.