The racism claims against Starbucks are not supported by the facts. Call me crazy, but I think a private company ought to have the right to enforce its rules against loitering and trespassing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| Welcome to the show, everybody. | |
| Thank you for listening. Hope you've had a great morning so far. | |
| I want to, I don't mean to disturb you, but I want to start with two stories. | |
| They're sort of harrowing stories that I want to tell, just to start with because it relates to the subject at hand. | |
| So here's the first story. | |
| These are both true stories, by the way. | |
| Last week, I went into a cafe in DC, and I really needed to use the bathroom. | |
| So I went in and I said, where's your bathroom? | |
| And they said, bathrooms are for customers only. | |
| And so clearly, the next thing that I did was I called the FBI because it was a hate crime. | |
| I mean, how else can you respond to something like that? | |
| No, actually, what I did was I said, oh, okay, and then I bought a coffee, and then I said, can you hold the coffee here for a minute? | |
| I'm going to use the bathroom. Because it's actually the concept of a restaurant or a store only allowing customers to use the facilities, that's a really normal concept in the world that I live in, which is just reality, where a great many stores and restaurants have that policy. | |
| Now, here's the second story. | |
| Again, totally a true story. | |
| This didn't happen to me, but I did witness it, and I was traumatized by it. | |
| I was at a Starbucks a few months ago, and I was sitting there doing my work, minding my own business. | |
| It wasn't even that busy, by the way, but there was a guy at a table, a few tables over from me, and I noticed he was just sitting there at the table for a little bit. | |
| He wasn't drinking any coffee. | |
| He didn't buy anything. And then he falls asleep and he's like sleeping at the table for only a couple of minutes and until the manager comes over and wakes him up and says, you're going to have to leave. | |
| You can't sleep here. And so the guy packs up his stuff and leaves. | |
| It was a white guy, by the way. | |
| But again, I didn't even realize it at the time, but apparently I witnessed a horrible human rights infringement because this guy had a human right to come into private property and use it as a camping ground if he wanted to. | |
| Now, I tell these stories because they relate to the, obviously, the Starbucks controversy, which has been raging and still hasn't calmed down over the last few days. | |
| And the latest on that, let me see if I can find it. | |
| I was just looking at the story. The Daily Wire has the story that on Tuesday, Starbucks announced that the company is going to close over 8,000 stores across the United States next month to conduct racial bias education. | |
| Geared toward preventing discrimination in their stores. | |
| So that's approximately 175,000 Starbucks employees who now will have to undergo racial bias or discrimination training because of these two incidents that happened at two different Starbucks locations over the last few days. | |
| If you're not familiar, just very quickly, I'll get you up to speed. | |
| There have been protests and boycotts and everything because of these two incidents. | |
| The first incident happened at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. | |
| A video surfaced and went viral of two black men being escorted out of a Starbucks in cuffs. | |
| They were being arrested in handcuffs. | |
| It's a pretty short video and there's not a lot to it. | |
| We don't see what happened before then or after. | |
| We just see these guys being escorted out. | |
| Not a lot of details, but just the image of two black men being arrested and removed from a Starbucks, that was enough in the minds of a lot of people, in the minds of the Pitchfork mob especially. | |
| That was enough to prove that, well, clearly there's racism here. | |
| I mean, there couldn't possibly be any other explanation at all. | |
| It must be racism because these two guys were black. | |
| Then, so that was enough of a controversy, and then on Monday, I don't know if it was on Monday, but yeah, it was on Monday, a Starbucks in Los Angeles went viral because there was video shot by a black man who went into this Starbucks, asked to use the restroom, and they said, well, restrooms are for customers only. | |
| Now, Again, very normal policy, especially now, maybe if you live in a more rural area, if you live in the suburbs, maybe you don't encounter it as much. | |
| But at urban restaurants and stores where there are a lot of people coming in and out, this is extremely common. | |
| In fact, it's the norm. | |
| I can't remember the last time I went into a restaurant in a city and they would just let anyone use the bathroom, even if they weren't customers. | |
| So really normal policy. | |
| This guy, he could have responded the way that I did when I was in D.C. and I was told the same thing. | |
| And that is, just buy something. | |
| Buy a coffee. Buy a, you know, just buy a cup of yogurt. | |
| I mean, buy anything. And then you can use the restroom. | |
| But that's not what this guy does. | |
| Instead, he pulls out his camera and he pulls out his phone and he starts... | |
| Taking video that a white guy walks out of the restroom and without asking, by the way, you know, the black guy comes up to the white guy, puts him on camera, doesn't ask his permission. | |
| And he finds out that the white guy apparently hadn't bought anything either. | |
| Yet he was allowed to use the bathroom, so that proves racism. | |
| Then he goes up to the manager, who, by the way, does not appear to be white herself. | |
| She's a woman, appears to be, not sure what her race is, but she appears to be a non-white woman. | |
| And he starts berating her for her supposed racial bias. | |
| And in both cases, that's enough for the pitchfork mob. | |
| And so now, you know, Starbucks is in cleanup mode. | |
| The Starbucks CEO just absolutely threw his own employees under the bus. | |
| The manager at the Philadelphia location, he just threw her under the bus, didn't even try to defend her. | |
| He met with the mayor of Philadelphia. | |
| He's met with activists. | |
| He met with the two men who were arrested. | |
| He was on Good Morning America. | |
| I think he met with the king of Saudi Arabia as well for some reason. | |
| He's just meeting with everybody, talking about this. | |
| And just throwing his employees under the bus in the process. | |
| And even this racial bias discrimination training, you're essentially throwing your employees under the bus again. | |
| What you're implying, I mean, if you're forcing 175,000 employees to undergo this bias training, what you're insinuating is that a lot of them are racially biased. | |
| Now, here's the thing. | |
| A couple things. First of all, I'm not a fan of Starbucks policy. | |
| I do like their product, I'll admit. | |
| I know a lot of people don't. They say it tastes burnt. | |
| But I guess I like burnt coffee. | |
| So I like their burnt coffee. | |
| Not a fan of their politics. | |
| So I'm not one to usually defend Starbucks. | |
| But even less am I a fan of pitchfork mobs. | |
| And I know that sometimes conservatives will tend to, when they see something like this, they see the liberal pitchfork mob coming after a liberal company. | |
| The conservatives will sit back and say, oh, isn't this nice? | |
| Isn't this nice to watch this happen? | |
| See, they're being hoisted with their own petard. | |
| That's a nice thing to see. | |
| Well, I think it's a really bad idea. | |
| I've said this many times. | |
| It's a bad idea to take the side of the pitchfork mob in any situation, no matter who they're coming after. | |
| I mean, the pitchfork mob should always be stood against. | |
| So that's the first thing. | |
| The second thing is, you know, I don't know. | |
| This manager at the Philadelphia location, she doesn't work there anymore. | |
| I guess she got fired. The manager in the Los Angeles location. | |
| Maybe they're racist. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I don't know them personally. | |
| I can't say for sure they aren't. | |
| But there are quite a few reasons to suspect that That there are probably other explanations. | |
| And what we should do, if we are rational and honest people, and we're decent people as well, then we're not going to immediately assume, when something like this happens, we're not going to immediately assume, oh, well, it must be racism. | |
| We're not just going to leapfrog over all of the other possible explanations and say, nope, it's none of them. | |
| It's got to be racism. | |
| So what are some other possible explanations? | |
| We know in the case of Philadelphia, let's take them one at a time, Philadelphia, the two men were sitting in the store, taking up seats. | |
| They hadn't actually purchased anything. | |
| This is loitering. | |
| It's trespassing. | |
| These restaurants do not exist as just public forums for you to just come in and hang out anytime you want. | |
| They own it. | |
| They set the rules for engagement. | |
| And their rules for engagement are, I think, pretty reasonable, pretty clear, pretty simple. | |
| You got to buy something if you want to sit at the table. | |
| Because there are a lot of... Here's what happens. | |
| There are a lot of customers who do buy something, and they would like to have a table to sit at, but you're taking up the table even though you didn't buy anything. | |
| And that's not fair, and so that's why these companies have rules against it. | |
| Now, it just so happens that this particular location in Philadelphia has had apparently a problem with loitering recently, and so this has been a policy that they've been focusing on more and more, and they've had to enforce. | |
| So the store employees tried to deal with the situation calmly and peacefully and reasonably. | |
| And they told the men that, look, you know, if you're not going to buy anything, then you have to leave. | |
| The two guys refused to leave. | |
| They refused to leave the store. | |
| Okay. Even though they were told you got to buy something or leave. | |
| They said, apparently they said, we're not going to buy anything and we're not going to leave either. | |
| And then the employee said, okay, well, then we're going to call the police. | |
| And apparently what the two men said was, well, go ahead and call them then. | |
| We're still not going to leave. Then the police arrive, and they're negotiating with these men for several minutes and saying, look, you just need to leave. | |
| It's private property. | |
| You can't just hang out here if you're not a customer. | |
| And they still refuse to leave. | |
| So let's go through the process here, okay? | |
| Step one, we have them deciding not to buy anything and take up a table. | |
| Step two, even when they're told, well, if you're not going to buy anything, you've got to leave, they still refuse to leave. | |
| Step three, the police show up and say, well, you've got to leave, and they still refused. | |
| So then they got arrested. | |
| Now, of course, it's claimed that, well, you know, white people loiter at Starbucks all the time, and they're never asked to leave. | |
| Really? I mean, do you know that? | |
| That's quite a thing to just declare. | |
| Well, white people are never told to leave Starbucks. | |
| How do you know? You're telling me it never happens. | |
| You know that for a fact. | |
| You know that at this location in Philadelphia, they have never asked white people to leave for loitering. | |
| Do you know that? Because if you know it, I mean, please provide your evidence because that would be very significant. | |
| I mean, if you had evidence that They frequently allow white people to loiter and never enforce the rules against white people, but then they do against black people. | |
| Well, then that is compelling evidence of racial discrimination, and then the protests are warranted. | |
| In fact, the protests wouldn't even be warranted, even in that case, because that would still just be one manager who's now fired who's guilty. | |
| But... At least they'd be more warranted than they are now. | |
| So if you have evidence of that, then let me know. | |
| I can tell you that I have, I just told you, I have seen myself at a Starbucks, a white person being kicked out for loitering. | |
| So I know it does happen, and I'm betting it's happened at this Philadelphia location. | |
| Because that's, see, that's the thing. | |
| If, let's say, this manager, whoever this person is, Is just uncontrollably, uncontainably racist. | |
| I mean, they're so racist that they would just, that they would actually kick out two black men simply for being black. | |
| I mean, that is, that's not just racist. | |
| That is, that's like racism on steroids. | |
| That is, you're so racist that you're going to even give up your job. | |
| Because that's what you're doing. That's what the manager will be doing in that case. | |
| The manager is saying, you know what, I'm going to forfeit this job just so I can make a racist statement against these black men, which is possible. | |
| But then the question is, how did this manager manage to survive and function at a Starbucks in Philadelphia if they're that racist against black people? | |
| Because I... I would assume, and I'm just assuming, but I think it's a pretty safe assumption, that this Starbucks in Philadelphia, we're not talking about a Starbucks in the middle of a town of 500 in North Dakota. | |
| Starbucks in Philadelphia, they probably have black customers coming in and out of that store hundreds of times a week, if not a day. | |
| And so has this manager, I mean, does she always do this? | |
| If she's so racist against black people, why is this the first time she's kicked out black people when there's been so many others she could have kicked out and she didn't? | |
| It just doesn't make a lot of sense. | |
| It's possible. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. | |
| Now, then we have the incident in Los Angeles. | |
| Now, that one to me is even less of a I mean, that one to me is so clearly, it's very clear that the guy came in looking for, he want, that's why he pulled out the video. | |
| It's not a normal, if you're just innocently there and you just want to use the bathroom and someone tells you, okay, well, you know, you got to buy something to use the bathroom. | |
| If your response is to pull out a camera and start taking a video for Twitter, that means that this is what you were looking for. | |
| This wasn't an innocent request on your part. | |
| You were looking for this exact response so that you could try to entrap them in some fake, false racism claim. | |
| But if the question is, well, okay, well, they said no to the black guy, but the white guy was allowed to To use the bathroom, even though he didn't buy anything, you know, must be racism. | |
| Could be. Or, you know, there are other explanations. | |
| It's possible that the white guy is a regular customer. | |
| He's there all the time. They know him. | |
| They know that he's going to buy something, so they let him use the bathroom first. | |
| I mean, to me, as just a logical person, that would be my first assumption. | |
| I would think it's probably that. | |
| Because regular customers frequently get privileges that non-regular customers don't get. | |
| I have several coffee shops that I go to all the time, and they'll have my order ready for me before I even get up to the counter. | |
| I get free refills. | |
| Okay, I get all this stuff because I'm there all the time, and I'm practically keeping them in business on my own. | |
| So could that be the explanation? | |
| Should we at least consider that explanation before we leap right to, oh, it must be racism? | |
| It must be that this non-white woman working at a Starbucks in Los Angeles harbors this grudge against black people. | |
| Again, possible, but given the context and the situation, that would not even be close to my first assumption. | |
| So, of course, everything I'm saying, it doesn't matter because you can't calm down the mob and... | |
| And these employees, they don't even have their CEO behind them, so it's just a done deal. | |
| But we do have to consider and think about, I mean, what's the implication here? | |
| Because now, what Starbucks has done now is they have now announced that you're allowed to loiter in their stores. | |
| This is what... | |
| The CEO, by apologizing profusely on behalf of a manager who was simply enforcing rules against loitering, by doing that, what he has declared to everybody in America is, well, at least if you're not white, you're allowed to loiter. | |
| I mean, come on in, use the Wi-Fi, sit down, use the bathrooms. | |
| You don't have to buy anything. | |
| In fact, bring your own packed lunch. | |
| Bring your own dinner spread and just sit out and bring the family and just set up a blanket there on the ground and have a picnic. | |
| It's basically what they've announced. | |
| They can't enforce rules against loitering anymore. | |
| There's a reason why when it comes to situations like this, I tend very often To fall on the side of the private company. | |
| I'll tell you something. I felt the same. | |
| I was saying the same thing with the whole controversy with whatever airline it was. | |
| I'm forgetting. Which airline was it where they dragged the guy out because he wouldn't give up his seat? | |
| And I sided with the airline on that. | |
| You know why? Because even if it's an unfair policy, When you're sitting in their establishment or in their airplane and they tell you to leave, you have to leave. | |
| They own it. | |
| You don't. You can't exercise some right over and above their own right to their own property. | |
| It's a very dangerous game we start playing when we tell people that you now have a human right to just march into a private establishment and just stay there, even if they tell you to leave. | |
| Even if the police tell you to leave, you don't have to. | |
| No, I think that the implications there are very dangerous. | |
| So most of the time, I'm going to tend to side with the private company whether the policy is fair or not. | |
| At the end of the day, it's their business, it's their building, it's their plane. | |
| They exercise authority over it. | |
| And you have to play by their rules if you want to use their property. | |
| This, to me, is just a basic rule of living in a free and decent and civilized society. | |
| But we live in such a society less and less, I suppose. | |
| So... There's my contrarian take on the Starbucks situation. |