Starbucks Witness: Implicit Bias Exists and White People Need to Speak Up When They See It
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Implicit bias is when you witness a racist incident at Starbucks, record it and tells your friends what happened, but they still question your version of events and imply that something else must have happened to cause the men to get arrested
To be fair I usually say this regardless of the person's skin colour, like any police brutality incident in Calgary. I do think it's important to remember stuff happened before and after the cameras started rolling. Has nothing to do with skin colour.
Not saying implicit bias doesn't exist but it's not always the case
Whether the employee chose to enforce the policy because the guys were black is a question we don't know the answer to, but there's certainly a lot of assumptions being made. If true it is a problem, but I don't think that's something that people should assume. .
Implicit bias is when you witness a racist incident at Starbucks, record it and tells your friends what happened, but they still question your version of events and imply that something else must have happened to cause the men to get arrested.
This happens in every post or thread even here, that involves a black person being shot or arrested by law enforcement.
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Implicit bias is the cashier assuming the black person is up to no good when their actions are identical to the white persons actions.
Provided you have the same reaction to a black person getting kicked out as a white person you have no bias. Instead, the reaction that something else must have happened to explain this, is one of white privilege. As a person who hasn't experienced this type of racism against them I don't expect it to happen to others.
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I tend to put the blame here on the employee that called rather than Starbucks. I frequent a Starbucks in downtown Charlotte quite often and every time I'm there there are two black people (that look homeless) that hang out at that location. They are respectful and don't bother other patrons so I don't see any reason why they would have to be removed.
Now that the dust has settled here's how things seem to have played out:
Two black guys enter starbucks and are waiting to meet someone about a real estate deal, they sit unmolested.
They ask to use the restroom, starbucks official policy is that washrooms are for paying customers only, so they can make a purchase or leave the store.
The two men refuse to make a purchase or leave, employees warn them they will call police, they still refuse and police are called.
Police politely ask them 3 times to leave, because they are trespassing. They refuse to leave and mock the police for having low paying jobs.
Police arrest them, hold them for 9 hours, during this period starbucks drops charges and they go free.
Media runs with "Can you believe what happened to these two blackmen who did nothing wrong?" narrative. Huge swathes of people are outraged.
Starbucks CEO (who is hugely progressive and was the driving force behind the well intentioned, but poorly conceived #racetogether fiasco) and the Philadelphia police commissioner (who is black) have to make public apologies for the incident
Sounds like two rich dicks pointlessly escalated a situation because they wanted a free bathroom and couldn't be bothered to buy a $3 coffee. The whole thing is so damn silly, could the media not find a better example of discrimination to blow up?
Now that the dust has settled here's how things seem to have played out:
Two black guys enter starbucks and are waiting to meet someone about a real estate deal, they sit unmolested.
They ask to use the restroom, starbucks official policy is that washrooms are for paying customers only, so they can make a purchase or leave the store.
What am I missing here? You can sit there doing nothing as long as you like but if you ask to use the bathroom - you have to buy or leave. He couldn't just say 'I'll wait and use the bathroom at home but continue to chill until my buddy arrives?"
What am I missing here? You can sit there doing nothing as long as you like but if you ask to use the bathroom - you have to buy or leave. He couldn't just say 'I'll wait and use the bathroom at home but continue to chill until my buddy arrives?"
It's a private business. They can ask anyone to leave. Especially people not using their services. (Buying something)
Just a few days after two men were arrested for waiting while Black for a friend at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, it seems like another racially driven incident went down at a Los Angeles location when a Black man was denied the use of the bathroom.
Brandon Ward took to social media to put the Starbucks manager on blast after he says he was denied the use of the bathroom for not being a paying customer. After he saw a white man exiting said bathroom, Ward asked him if he had bought anything before using the bathroom, to which he said “No… I just asked for the code.”
So, what's the tolerance limit on lingering in a private place of business? Are you entitled to stay at a cafe occupying a table for as long you want if you haven't bought anything there? How long can you occupy a table browsing Internet after buying a $2 cup of coffee? Should Starbucks charge something for the time you stay at a table in addition to charging you for coffee? These are all legitimate questions that everyone is ignoring while focusing on the race of these two guys instead.
My friend used to own a downtown cafe. On the opening day, a homeless guy showed up and wished my friend good luck. He gave him a free bowl of soup. Next day, he brought others. I came to visit the cafe in a few days, there were five homeless guys sitting inside and occupying a table. No other customers were around. People would come in, look at that table and just leave. My friend asked them to leave, they started shouting and attacked him. Police officer stopped by and said "yeah, that's a problem downtown, not much we can do"...
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Hey maaaaan where else am I supposed to look like I'm working on my screenplay/novel/one man show for broadway?
there you go
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"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think." Georg Hegel
“To generalize is to be an idiot.” William Blake
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So, what's the tolerance limit on lingering in a private place of business? Are you entitled to stay at a cafe occupying a table for as long you want if you haven't bought anything there? How long can you occupy a table browsing Internet after buying a $2 cup of coffee? Should Starbucks charge something for the time you stay at a table in addition to charging you for coffee? These are all legitimate questions that everyone is ignoring while focusing on the race of these two guys instead.
My friend used to own a downtown cafe. On the opening day, a homeless guy showed up and wished my friend good luck. He gave him a free bowl of soup. Next day, he brought others. I came to visit the cafe in a few days, there were five homeless guys sitting inside and occupying a table. No other customers were around. People would come in, look at that table and just leave. My friend asked them to leave, they started shouting and attacked him. Police officer stopped by and said "yeah, that's a problem downtown, not much we can do"...
I've seen a lot of variations on this, and a have dealt with a lot of businesses struggling with answering these questions.
One of the ones I like are some of the McD's I've seen, especially around schools, that have signs along the lines of "Please limit your visit with us to 30 minutes". Gives them a bit of a leg to stand on, and sets some expectations to the customers, can be 'looked the other way at' if the staff is feeling it, or pointed to if they need to.
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When I see a lot of manufactured social media outrage, I always try applying the reversed identity test to stories like this one. If in exactly the same situation, the two guys being asked to leave were really unlikable/polarizing characters, say, two neo-nazis covered in swastikas, would the reactions on social media have been same or would they really focus on owners' right to remove someone from premises, because, you know, it's the right thing to do?
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"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think." Georg Hegel
“To generalize is to be an idiot.” William Blake
So, what's the tolerance limit on lingering in a private place of business? Are you entitled to stay at a cafe occupying a table for as long you want if you haven't bought anything there?
You may stay indefinitely, as long as you are white. Allgedly.
This "full story" that has come out isn't even the problem, I don't think rational people have a problem with them being asked to leave. It's the selective enforcement of this policy by Starbucks that is the problem.
So, what's the tolerance limit on lingering in a private place of business? Are you entitled to stay at a cafe occupying a table for as long you want if you haven't bought anything there? How long can you occupy a table browsing Internet after buying a $2 cup of coffee? Should Starbucks charge something for the time you stay at a table in addition to charging you for coffee? These are all legitimate questions that everyone is ignoring while focusing on the race of these two guys instead.
As long as it's consistent between races, there shouldn't be an issue. The issue was that Starbucks, and that Starbucks in particular, hadn't enforced any time limit or customer only policy even at that exact time. Others had noted that they were there without paying and were not asked to leave. One person stated she used the washroom without paying. So it is a question of why these 2 men were asked to leave and had the police called on them.
However, anyone taking issue with the police are stupid. They got a call about trespassing, the gentleman were trespassing, they had no other options once the men refused to leave.
