Flat Out Racism

I'll have a venti half-shot low-fat decaf almond milk latte, no whip. And please hold the racism.

I said please, so I'm sure everything will be fine.

I'm following the story of the two young men who were taken into custody in a Philadelphia Starbucks earlier this week.

In case you missed it, two twenty-three year old black men arrived at their local Starbucks to meet a friend for a business meeting. One of them asked the woman at the register if he could use the restroom. She informed him that bathrooms were for paying customers only. He did not protest or ask again. He simply sat down with his friend to wait for their business associate to arrive.

The barista came over to ask them if they wanted water or drinks. They politely declined. The barista called the police.

WTF? The barista called the police?

I've been to Starbucks and sat for twenty minutes without ordering anything. Never been arrested. And no barista has EVER come out from behind the counter and come to my table to ask me if I wanted to order anything. It's a Starbucks. You order at the counter.

Why did this barista (I really hate that word) feel the need to call police to come get two well-behaved young men sitting quietly at their table?

If you say anything except racism you're living in denial. It wasn't "unconscious bias". That's giving someone an excuse for something that is inexcusable. Even Starbucks executive chairman, Howard Schultz, knows why his employee called the police. "There's no doubt in my mind that the reason that police were called was because they were African American."

I'm not really sure where I'm going with any of this. I certainly don't have a solution to the problem of racism. Nobel Prize to me if I did. I do, however, very much appreciate that Starbucks is not taking this lightly. They are closing all of their stores for an afternoon to do training to make sure this doesn't happen again.

It will happen again. But maybe not at Starbucks, and that's a start. And to those who think that Starbucks is only doing the training "for their corporate image" and that their actions really don't mean anything, I would ask has any other company or organization ever done anything like this in the wake of racist accusations? I can't think of any. And also, have you ever heard a company CEO or COO say anything like this: "Our practices and training led to the bad outcome." That's a quote from Kevin Johnson, the company's chief executive. That's putting it on the line. That is the opposite of passing the buck (note to Trump: You see? Taking responsibility for your actions CAN be done!).

I know that one of the most frequent responses to crisis these days is to boycott, or to disengage from a company. In the wake of the Parkland shootings, I discontinued my account on TripAdvisor (and several other companies) because of their association with the NRA. I get the tactic. It works. After a few days these companies discontinued their association with the NRA (there were probably a few other people who stopped using these companies, but in my mind it was MY politely-worded email and withdrawal that tipped the scales).

But I am not going to boycott Starbucks. Because Starbucks DID something. They did something IMMEDIATELY. They did not hem and haw and try to run from it. They clearly identified the problem and their part in perpetuating the problem. They took responsibility and arranged a first step in ensuring that this doesn't happen again in their establishments.

So Starbucks will not be receiving a polite email from me telling them that they no longer have my business (not that this would have scared them considering the number of times I actually frequent Starbucks). Instead they will be receiving a polite email congratulating them on owning up to a problem that is pervasive, and that maybe we all might be complicit in even though we might not want to admit it.

You have my business, Starbucks, and my admiration for setting an example in what it looks like to own up to being part of a problem.