Starbucks
Let’s paint a picture. Imagine waking up early one Saturday morning and heading into your local coffee shop. You may have some studying to do. You may want to get a little extra work done or read your newspaper. You may not want to order anything and just be waiting on a friend to arrive so you both can head out together. Well this was exactly the case for two black men waiting in a Philadelphia Starbucks. These two men had been sitting inside the Starbucks patiently waiting on their third party. They were not causing any troubles or issues, they were sitting quietly within the place of business, yet they were racially profiled and the police had been called on the two while they were there. What was the reason the police was called on them? Were they disturbing the peace? Had they stolen anything or harassed someone? The answers to all of these questions are in fact, NO. They were the exact opposite of all the above and were simply just waiting. The police had been called on the two and they were handcuffed and escorted out of the Starbucks in handcuffs. Was all of this necessary? What could they have possibly done to deserve all of this? This was definitely one of the many racial profiling cases that are sometimes looked over but shouldn’t be. Sitting while black?
You would think these types of things didn’t still happen in 2018 but unfortunately they still do. The question was posed, “can black people do anything without scrutiny?” Time and time again, black people are seen doing regular everyday things but it always seems to be a problem if the person seems to be in the wrong place, wrong time and stands out in the crowd. Would the situation been different if the two men were white, probably so. This situation had been caught on camera and hit social media, the news, and even the CEO of the company. It is safe to say that they have the support of people near and far and they are helping to broadcast the company and the racial profiling. The CEO of the company personally apologized to the two men and announced that the company with undergo an anti-bias training. Race played the major part in this whole ordeal. You could even say gender played a part because things could have gone differently if they were two women. We are constantly learning that racism is continually taking place in the work place and in schools and now in public coffee shops. “Well-meaning outrage aside, it’s time that white people in America get real about the way racism, including their own, reveals itself in social situations, usually off-camera.”- Elon James White of the New York Times.
