Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Yes, Starbucks is Racist

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April 19, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

24:12

Yes, Starbucks is Racist

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	Starbucks is a very progressive company.
	It's run by very progressive people and they want to do very progressive things.
	And because of this, they have a long history of absolutely bungling every attempt they make to try and be the agents of social change that I think they do genuinely want to be.
	You may remember back in 2015 that Starbucks ran the hashtag race together campaign where they would try and encourage their baristas to have conversations on race with their customers.
	This was as big a failure as you might imagine and made Starbucks a laughing stock at the time.
	But the interesting thing is as Business Insider reports that this initiative came straight from the very top from then CEO Howard Schultz.
	Schultz couldn't get off his mind the racial protests dominating the national headlines in the wake of the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown.
	They didn't do any market research to see how this would be perceived by the public and the campaign backfired within the first 24 hours.
	But Schultz just described this as a tactical mistake.
	Although the top brass of Starbucks had failed to do any good on this particular occasion, more occasions were bound to spring up.
	And if we fast forward to the 12th of April 2018, the perfect opportunity to present their progressive credentials dropped right into their laps.
	And I saw the entire thing, I saw the entire thing in the staff room, and the moment says for any customers that are out there to eat, they didn't do anything.
	Hey, I'm really impressed with you.
	Congratulations, who I am.
	Thank you.
	This video went viral on Twitter and information about the people in this video began to come out.
	The white man objecting to the police removal of the two black men was a local Jewish businessman called Andrew Yaffe.
	According to the Times of Israel, Yaffe runs a real estate development firm and was meeting with the two men to discuss business investment opportunities.
	And as he stated in the video, why would they be asked to leave?
	Does anyone else think this is ridiculous?
	It's absolute discrimination.
	And as unnamed commentators in the video said, they didn't do anything.
	Both Yaffe and the unidentified woman are completely correct.
	The black men were indeed being discriminated against because they did nothing.
	But it wasn't because they were black.
	It was because Starbucks is a private company and the young men refused to become customers.
	And when the manager asked them to leave, they refused.
	And so the manager called the police to have them removed as trespassers.
	Hi, I have two gentlemen on my cafe that are refusing to make a purchase or leave.
	And so the police arrived, they arrested the young men, and they took them to the police station where, after nine hours of waiting, they were subsequently released without charge.
	And that's where this story probably should have ended.
	Why the young men refused to purchase a cup of coffee is unknown at this time.
	Why the young men then didn't leave when asked is unknown at this time.
	But the responsibility for these events lies squarely on their shoulders because everyone else involved with this event had done everything by the book.
	Good afternoon.
	My name is Commissioner Richard Ross.
	I'm from the Philadelphia Police Department.
	I know there is a lot of concern and a lot of attention being spread around an incident that happened here in Philadelphia at Starbucks at 1801 Spruce Streets.
	And on Thursday, at about 4.40, police received a 911 call for a disturbance and trespassing.
	When the police arrived, they were met by Starbucks employees.
	who said that two males were trespassing and had refused to leave the establishment.
	According to employees, they had seen these two males come in.
	They sat down and after being seated, they decided that they needed to use the restroom.
	Starbucks said that according to their company policy, they do not allow non-paying members or non-paying people of the public to come in and use the restroom.
	And so they then asked these two males to leave.
	These two males refused to leave and the police were called.
	Now, when the police were summoned to the scene, they get there and they get this story that I just began to outline.
	They then approached the males.
	They asked the males to leave because they're being asked to leave by Starbucks employees.
	In fact, in an effort to quell the situation, officers actually called for a supervisor so that it would not get out of hand, something that was a good decision.
	And three different occasions, the officers asked the males politely to leave the location because they were being asked to leave by employees because they were trespassing.
	Instead, the males continued to refuse as they had told the employees previously, and they told the officers that they were not leaving.
	When the call was initially made, the Starbucks employees had told the males that they were going to call police, and they said, go ahead and call police.
	We don't care.
	So police get there and they're confronted by the same type of attitude and repeatedly are told that they're not leaving.
	In fact, there's some alleged rhetoric about you don't know what you're doing.
	You're only a $45,000 a year employee or something to that regard.
	And so because these individuals refused to leave, because Starbucks actually called, the police did not just happen upon this event.
	They did not just walk into Starbucks to get coffee.
	They were called there for a service and that service had to do with welling a disturbance, a disturbance that had to do with trespassing.
	So I need to underscore the fact that these males were arrested.
	When they were arrested, they were taken out essentially without incident.
	There was no harm done to them.
	But after being transported to the police district in the area, the officers, after processing paperwork, discovered that Starbucks no longer was interested in prosecuting.
	And so at that point, those males were released from custody.
	It is important to emphasize and underscore that these officers had legal standing to make this arrest.
	Again, they were called to the scene because employees said they were trespassing.
	It is important for me to say that, in short, these officers did absolutely nothing wrong.
	From the commissioner's statements there, it appears that the young men were not only deliberately provoking the police to arrest them, but they seemed to have some kind of condescending attitude towards the police in regards to the Pandora's box that was potentially being opened by their arrest.
	To summarize, there is absolutely no malfeasance here.
	Everyone in a position of authority did exactly as they should do, exactly by the book, and this had exactly the result that one would expect.
	And this wasn't even an unusual occurrence.
	Is that a routine for a football like that to happen?
	Well, routine in the sense that it is not at all uncommon for us to get a call to a business that, you know, somebody they want to remove from their location.
	And when they do, in many instances, people usually leave before we get there, and in some instances, they leave when we arrive, just our mere presence.
	But most people will move just simply because we tell them the proprietor wants you to leave.
	And in this case, that was not the issue.
	So, and that's for them to decide why they didn't do that.
	But there are laws on the books that we have to follow.
	I mean, if we had our brothers, we wouldn't have came there in the first place.
	Let's just keep it as simple.
	But for some reason, Starbucks apologized.
	We apologize to the two individuals and our customers and are disappointed that this led to an arrest.
	We take these matters seriously and clearly have more work to do when it comes to how we handle incidents in our stores.
	We are reviewing our policies and will continue to engage with the community and the police department to try and ensure that these types of situations never happen in any of our stores.
	In response to mounting pressure on social media by far-left activists, current CEO Kevin Johnson published another apology.
	Since landing here in Philadelphia two days ago, the leadership team and I have been on a mission to listen and learn with an objective of understanding how this situation could have ever happened and to begin to take the steps necessary to ensure it never happens again.
	You know, I've had the opportunity to meet with the two young gentlemen who were arrested last Thursday in our stores.
	I sat in front of them and I apologized personally to them for what happened.
	They didn't deserve this.
	They shared with me the story of their personal experience going through this.
	And we had a very emotional and a very constructive conversation.
	And if you thought that was an impressive negation of the agency of the two black men who had taken deliberate steps in order to get themselves arrested by violating the rules and practices of not only Starbucks, but the laws on trespassing in Philadelphia, wait until you hear Howard Schultz's apology.
	I first saw it on Friday.
	I couldn't believe it.
	I was sick to my stomach.
	I was embarrassed.
	I was ashamed.
	This is the antithesis of the values and culture of everything Starbucks stands for.
	It stands for you founded this company to foster human experience.
	Yes, so this was an anathema to me.
	However, it's undeniable when you look at the tape that we are responsible, that I personally am responsible, and we need to address it with transparency and honesty.
	And I completely agree with him.
	And so in the interest of transparency and honesty, I'd like to just say I find it absolutely reprehensible that anyone, especially a white person, should be able to disempower a black person to the point where the black person cannot even deliberately get themselves arrested and take responsibility for their own actions.
	It's as if the white executives at the top of Starbucks believe that they own the black men who go into Starbucks and then act out.
	As if they are somehow responsible for the behavior of the black men because they think the black men are their property.
	And then, the process began.
	Coffee is anti-black!
	Starbuck's coffee is anti-black!
	A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap!
	A whole lot of racism, a whole- WEEKEND!
	You're looking at a gold member right now, no longer.
	And I absolutely agree with those protesters.
	There is an awful lot of racism at Starbucks, and it begins right at the very top with the managerial class of Starbucks, who clearly believe that the black people who frequent their stores are their moral inferiors and cannot be expected to behave in line with the rest of us.
	And naturally, their soft bigotry of low expectations has to be enforced on the rest of the company.
	Well, today we announced the first step in that journey.
	On the afternoon of May 29th, we are closing all 8,000-plus U.S. company-operated stores in the United States for a mandatory training around unconscious bias, conscious inclusion, and ensuring that we take every step we can so that every single customer that walks in our door feels welcome and safe.
	It's interesting how Kevin Johnson defines anyone who enters the store as a customer, whether they purchase something or not, because the two men he's talking about are actually not included in what he has just defined there.
	What's interesting is that this goes against the way that Starbucks is actually managed as a company and how it deals with its own internal policies.
	For example, Starbucks does not have a company-wide policy on asking members of the public to leave.
	The company leaves safety and customer service protocol decisions up to the store managers themselves, said a company official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
	So by their own internal rules, the store manager who called the police to have these two men removed had done nothing wrong either.
	So what happened to this store manager?
	Well, the store manager, a lady called Holly, had left her position at Starbucks.
	And unsurprisingly, this was not good enough for the vengeful Twitterati, who complained en masse that she should have been fired before she was allowed to leave.
	Presumably to make it more difficult for her to find another job, despite the fact that she had done nothing wrong.
	Unless, of course, that is you are a far-left activist, in which case, she did everything wrong.
	To call the police, as we just heard the 911, most people go in Starbucks and don't buy anything, at least not even commensurate to the time.
	I know folks take a laptop, go in Starbucks and stayed eight hours a day and work there all day.
	They're not drinking eight hours worth of coffee.
	So this training is absolutely necessary.
	Well, that's sort of the thing here, Elise.
	I mean, I've gone into Starbucks loads of times in yoga pants, used the bathroom, sat down, charged my phone, and most likely left.
	Did the store manager, sure, on one level they could say they're adhering to company policy, the company is, you got to buy something, but they don't really put this policy in place with a lot of the people who are there.
	Well, I think the harsh reality is that this problem is so much bigger than Starbucks and that it's this daily indignity and inequality that exists for far too many Americans in this country.
	And it's something that I as a white American need to be more cognizant of and everyone needs to be more aware of, quite frankly, because it's unacceptable that this entrenched racism has seeped into so many levels of our society to the point where the police are brought in to become to aid and abet it.
	That's right, folks.
	Apparently nobody in Starbucks buys coffee but only the black people are asked to leave because everything in America is soaked in entrenched racism.
	In fact, it's so racist that a black person can walk into a Starbucks, demand a free coffee and get it.
	We got to go outside, get my free coffee.
	Thank you.
	How you doing?
	Good, how are you?
	All right, I heard y'all was racist, so I came to get my own free coffee.
	I saw that.
	Yeah, I heard you guys don't like black people, so I wanted to get my Starbucks reparations voucher.
	What's that?
	It's not a real thing.
	It's a real thing.
	I mean, I'll give it to you.
	Yeah, I saw that on my Twitter last night.
	Yeah, I need a free coffee.
	That's what I'm talking about.
	This is justice.
	Where was it?
	Billy.
	Billy?
	What?
	Yeah.
	Reparations, man.
	Gotta get my reparations for being black in America.
	Black Lives Matter.
	Black Lives Matter.
	What?
	Do you have any flavors in it?
	We got caramel, hazelnut.
	I'll take caramel.
	What's your name?
	I appreciate you.
	Amanda, Amanda, you are a great.
	Is it?
	You're amazing.
	Thank you.
	I was working at Ryder, and our finals were starting next week.
	So I had to like start working so I can do my finals and stuff and then I go home for the summer.
	I wish you the best.
	Thank you.
	You too.
	You know what I'm saying?
	You gotta get your free coffee out here, man.
	You gotta get your Starbucks reparations, man.
	Huh?
	Yeah, this is how we do, man.
	Black Lives Matter, baby.
	I used to follow this fellow when I was on Twitter and he uses the name Hotep Jesus.
	And this was a troll at the expense of Starbucks to demonstrate to them just how unbelievably condescending that they are and how easily that they can be manipulated.
	After posting that video to Twitter, he says, Black privilege gets me free coffee.
	I love racism, only in America.
	Don't forget to get your free coffee today if you are black.
	And by far, the funniest response to this was by comedian Terry Jones, who says, this is hilarious as hell.
	Someone is watching this yelling, Wakanda forever.
	And on social media, these coupons started circulating, which alleged that if you took one to a Starbucks store, you'd be given a free coffee.
	However, scanning the QR code demonstrated that this was in fact a 4chan prank.
	And these are just a few examples of the numerous hoaxes that are being perpetrated by 4chan.
	These are persuasive because the rhetoric used in them is identical to the rhetoric that Starbucks and their managerial team are using to describe the situation.
	They absolutely are doubling down on the idea that Starbucks is in the wrong here, that the black men that were removed from their store did nothing wrong because they can't do anything wrong.
	Even though by all accounts, the Starbucks manager was completely justified in calling the police to have them removed.
	But of course, there is no pleasing the activists who are pushing this agenda, as this article from The Guardian should explain.
	And while it's rare that I agree in principle with an opinion piece from The Guardian, it will become obvious that we came to these conclusions from completely different lines of reasoning.
	So while the line between implicit and explicit bias can become murky at times, the Starbucks incident is a clear case of explicit bias and to call it anything less is outrageous.
	To consciously pick up the phone and call the police on two black men sitting at a table doing nothing is an explicit act.
	Even if there is a legal reason why doing nothing in a certain situation is in and of itself the crime.
	What is more concerning than how this incident is being represented to the masses is the willingness of non-profits and social justice organizations to discuss overt discriminatory incidents through the lens of implicit bias.
	Implicit bias frames offer these organizations the ability to discuss race in disarming, non-threatening means because the idea is implicit bias affects everyone's minds unconsciously and no one is safe from its grasp.
	For anyone not familiar with these concepts, it's very similar to the way that the Catholic Church will tell you that Satan compels you to commit sinful acts.
	There is some validity to this argument.
	However, the concerning part is when implicit bias workshops, which rely heavily on social psychology to understand and overcome our brains' unconscious racial biases and stereotyping, are offered in place to mask explicit and structural bias qualifiers that form racial violence and attitudes.
	This jargon-heavy paragraph can be more easily streamlined by explaining that what this means is that anytime an institution acts against a black person, that is an act of structural or institutional bias, which means institutional racism.
	And no, it doesn't matter what the black person had done to make the institutions act in this way.
	As such, implicit bias workshops have become nothing more than a neoliberal PR stunt for both corporations attempting to avoid legal liability and race organizations seeking to be solutions and funding oriented.
	It's an easy out when genuine solutions to racial violence are much more complex, time-consuming, and expensive, even if there was no racial violence or legal liability.
	The ways by which neoliberalism has co-opted social justice work is not new, though.
	Most recently, Cornell West called out Tanaishi Coates for being the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle.
	Coates' contribution to the mainstreaming of the black narrative is undeniable, yet West has very valid critiques of Coates' work that apply to the emerging implicit bias field as well.
	What the author of this article is identifying in a very oblique way is that international corporations like Starbucks are headed by people who are often very sympathetic to the black narrative of social justice.
	And as we see in the case of Starbucks, are desperate to participate in that conversation.
	But part of the problem that they encounter in trying to interface with these activists is that these activists view these international corporations as part of the oppressive structures that they themselves are trying to abolish.
	So from a purist's point of view, there can be no interface between Starbucks and social justice.
	Starbucks is only capable of victimizing and exploiting black people.
	So anything that Starbucks does in order to reach out in this way is inherently untrustworthy and subverts the goal and the message of social justice activists.
	Because all of these organizations, as we have seen, are inherently and implicitly biased.
	And to explain the problem of institutions in America demonstrating bias towards black people when they commit crimes, I'll let Don Lemon, the CNN host and Emmy Award winner, interview Kamal Bell, a man who used to host a show called Totally Biased and an Emmy Award winner himself, to explain to us the problem of explicit or implicit racial bias in the United States.
	This is the thing.
	We can't talk about it like it's a Starbucks issue.
	This is an America issue.
	Until America and specifically American white people are ready to confront and participate in America's history and legacy of racism and current day of racism, like the white woman in the video did who took the video, we're still going to be here, Don.
	We'll be here in a year talking about another coffee shop or something else.
	But you know that when we talk about this, right, we're race baiters instead of informing people from our own experience that it happens.
	Oh, I'm so sick of that.
	You're a racebaiter.
	And listen, every time I have like a group of African Americans on, if there are no people who are not of color, I get the thing, what is this, BET?
	Why don't you have some diversity?
	I'm like, do you watch cable news all day?
	I mean, this is like, you know, you should be squatting me for having these African Americans on TV.
	Go on.
	Yeah, a lot of what goes on in the news media is, white guy, what do you think?
	I don't know, white guy, what do you think?
	I think this white guy.
	And so whenever we hear from the voices of people who aren't older white men, we start to think something weird is happening.
	I think, again, white people, as Pastor Michael McBride from a church in Berkeley said, white people need to understand that racism is hurting them too.
	Not the same way it's hurting people of color, but it's actually affecting your life in a negative way, the way the woman in the video understood it and the way that my wife understands it.
	Yeah, diversity of opinion is one thing, but we also need diversity in ethnicity as well, representation, and not just, we have to stop having just conversations.
	We need to do something about it.
	We need to do something.
	This is not something we can't act like Starbucks has to fix this.
	America has to fix it.
	So to conclude, yes, Starbucks is racist, just not in the way that they imagine.
	It seems that the top management of Starbucks still carry the white man's burden.
	They believe that they are responsible for what their black inferiors do.
	This is the opposite of my opinion.
	I do not believe that white people are responsible for the decisions of black people.
	I believe black people are more than capable of taking responsibility for those themselves.

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