Is Starbucks Racist?

[fredtoast]

(04-23-2018, 04:10 PM)fredtoast Wrote: And, as usual, what makes sense to you is that the white person could not have been racist. 

(04-23-2018, 04:26 PM)PhilHos Wrote: False. I really wish you would READ what I actually wrote and stop making shit up.

I read this just fine

(04-19-2018, 05:28 PM)PhilHos Wrote: Now, I could be wrong and the employee was a racist in the extreme.  .  .  but what I posted makes the most sense to me.

What makes the most sense to you is that the white person could not be racists.

Even when you try to spin it that "they are both wrong" you still refused to believe that the white guy was racists.  Instead you just said he "misunderstood something".  Basically you believe that white people can make mistakes but they can't be racist.


Looks like you are the one who needs to go back and READ exactly what YOU wrote before you accuse me of making anything up.

[*PhilHos*]

(04-23-2018, 05:56 PM)fredtoast Wrote: What makes the most sense to you is that the white person could not be racists.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Try re-reading it again. What makes the most sense to me is that the white person WAS not racist.

(04-23-2018, 05:56 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Even when you try to spin it that "they are both wrong" you still refused to believe that the white guy was racists.  

First off, you can't prove that the white guy was "racists".

More importantly, I recognize the possibility the white guy could have been racist - it's right there in my post that you refuse to read for some reason. And until there's sufficient evidence to suggest otherwise, it doesn't make logical sense to me for some guy to decide to call the cops on black people just because he's racist and watns them gone.

(04-23-2018, 05:56 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Even when you try to spin it that "they are both wrong" you still refused to believe that the white guy was racists.  Instead you just said he "misunderstood something".  Basically you believe that white people can make mistakes but they can't be racist.

This has got to be the stupidest logical inference anyone on this subforum has ever made (and that's saying something with some of the guys that post here). So, because I don't beleive this particular white guy was racist - because there's no evidence to suggest he is - that means that I believe white people can't be racist? Really? A Donald Trump tweet has more logic than this.

By your logic, I can say that you believe that black people are incapable of doing anything wrong and should never have the cops called on them ever. 

(04-23-2018, 05:56 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Looks like you are the one who needs to go back and READ exactly what YOU wrote before you accuse me of making anything up.

Wrong. You claimed that I don't think racism exists; you claimed that I think white people are incapable of being racist; and you claimed that I made up facts about the black gentlemen from the OP. You have no evidence for ANY of those claims. Combine that with the fact that they're all false and you get to the only logical conclusion which is that you have fabricated claims against me. 

Here's the thing: I just want to know why. It's not like we were debating anything of import; heck, we weren't even having a debate. I just gave my speculation on what I think actually happened and the next thing I know, you're saying I don't believe white people can be racist. Were you bored? Just felt like starting a "fight"? Were you high? 

[fredtoast]

(04-24-2018, 04:32 PM)PhilHos Wrote:  So, because I don't beleive this particular white guy was racist - because there's no evidence to suggest he is - that means that I believe white people can't be racist?

There is a lot of evidence that other white people could hang out at Starbucks without getting the police called on them.

[*PhilHos*]

(04-25-2018, 10:07 AM)fredtoast Wrote: There is a lot of evidence that other white people could hang out at Starbucks without getting the police called on them.

There is also a lot of evidence that other black people could hang out at Starbucks without getting the police called on them.

I don't see what this has to do with the one sentence of mine you quoted.

[GMDino]

The two gentlemen who were arrested are apparently the bigger people.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-black-men-arrested-starbucks-settlement-20180502-story.html

Quote:Black men arrested at Starbucks settle for $1 each, and a promise of $200K for young entrepreneurs program
 
Two black men arrested for sitting at a Philadelphia Starbucks without ordering anything settled with the city Wednesday for a symbolic $1 each and a promise from officials to set up a $200,000 program for young entrepreneurs.


The men and their lawyer told The Associated Press the settlement was an effort to make sure something positive came out of the incident.

"We thought long and hard about it and we feel like this is the best way to see that change that we want to see," said Donte Robinson, one of those arrested. "It's not a right-now thing that's good for right now, but I feel like we will see the true change over time."


The arrest of Rashon Nelson and Robinson on April 12 touched off a furor around the U.S. over racial profiling. They were led away in handcuffs and accused of trespassing after the manager called police, saying the men refused to buy anything or leave. After spending hours in jail, they were released and no charges were filed.

Their arrest record will be expunged as part of the deal.


The men said they were waiting at the coffee shop in the city's well-to-do Rittenhouse Square neighborhood for a business meeting with a third man about a potential real estate opportunity.


"I am pleased to have resolved the potential claims against the city in this productive manner," Mayor Jim Kenney said. 
"This was an incident that evoked a lot of pain in our city and put us under a national spotlight for unwanted reasons."


The entrepreneur program will be for Philadelphia public high school students.


Nelson said he considers the incident a case of being at "the wrong place at the right time because of the outcome that can come out of it."


Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, who is black, at first defended his officers' conduct, but days later issued a televised apology for the way the Starbucks call was handled.


During the uproar, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson came to Philadelphia to apologize to the men. He also announced that more than 8,000 Starbucks stores in the U.S. would close on the afternoon of May 29 so nearly 175,000 employees can get training in unconscious bias.

It also appears that everyone admits it was wrong to have called the police and to be arrested...except maybe a couple people around this board. 

[*bfine32*]

Interesting story concerning Chipolte

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chipotle-offers-rehire-manager-seen-223208085.html

Quote:Fast-food giant Chipotle rehired a manager of one of its Minnesota franchises it had fired after she was recorded in a series of viral cellphone videos refusing to serve a group of young black men unless they paid first.

The restaurant chain said in a statement Monday that it reversed it's decision after it "spent the last few days reviewing the evidence available to us regarding the incident."

The company had earlier said it was aware that one of the alleged victims who claimed that he and his friends were racially profiled had previously boasted on Twitter about dine-and-dash incidents specifically targeting Chipotle.

[GMDino]

Thanks for bumping this thread.  I read the following story yesterday and didn't quite know where to post it.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/unwanted-subject-what-led-a-kirkland-yogurt-shop-to-call-police-on-a-black-man/?fbclid=IwAR3KGSPHhXLB8G9V4iz8C9V5_iu05VNXeGOeaFOFwnYa9BIXdSbupKuiTUI

Quote:‘Unwanted subject’: What led a Kirkland yogurt shop to call police on a black man

He turned out to be supervising a parental visit, and is also a nine-year Air Force veteran. But the employees were scared of him and the police asked him to leave anyway.

When I play the 911 call for Byron Ragland — the emergency call about him — I study his face. I expect that maybe he’ll get angry.


Instead he looks sad. When it ends, after three minutes, he sits back across the table and his eyes mist up a bit.

“What’s my reaction?” he says, after I ask. “My reaction is that this was just another Wednesday.”

It was a week ago Wednesday when Ragland was sitting in a Menchie’s, the frozen-yogurt franchise, on Northeast 124th Street in Kirkland.

Ragland, 31, is both a court-appointed special advocate and a visitation supervisor, so his job is to oversee meetings between kids and the parents who have lost custody of them.



That’s what he was doing at the store — he was supervising an outing between a mother and her 12-year-old son. The boy wanted ice cream, so the three drove to Menchie’s, arrived together and had been sitting there for about half an hour, visiting, when Ragland looked up to find two police officers standing at the table.


“They asked me to leave,” Ragland said. “They asked for my ID. They told me the manager had been watching me and wanted me to move along.”

Ragland did “move along,” he says — though that phrase, as if he were a stray dog, made him bristle. The police report reflects that the Kirkland officers were told he was there working. In fact he was legally required to be there overseeing the mother and son.


“Ragland had two associates (female adult and male juvenile) with him, who stated they were there with him for visitation,” the report says. 
They were asked to leave anyway, and they did.


“Store employees … told me that he had been in the store for a while and did not buy anything, and he was not making them feel comfortable,” says an “unwanted subject” report. The employees “were both thankful that Ragland was gone.”

Ragland is a nine-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force, a staff sergeant who served as a jet-engine mechanic in Turkey, Germany and Qatar. He is also currently a psychology student at the University of Washington, Tacoma.


Of course I have not yet mentioned another defining feature about Ragland — the one that, at least in this story, seems to him to be all anybody can see. He’s black.

The 911 call alone is like a three-minute case study in implicit bias and assumptions.


The store owner, Ramon Cruz, called 911 and asked the police to come in part because Ragland had been sitting there not ordering anything. 


The owner was not at the store, but was calling on behalf of two store employees, who are both identified in the police report as female and white.


“They’re kind of scared because he looks suspicious,” Cruz tells the dispatcher. “All he does is look at his phone, look at them, look at his phone, look at them.”

Cruz tells the dispatcher that Ragland is African American. There’s no mention that Ragland had arrived with a mother and child, both of whom are white. The store has had problems recently, Cruz tells the dispatcher, with “the homeless shooting drugs in the bathroom,” and also a robbery.


The dispatcher then says: “We can have the officers come there and tell him to move along.”


Astonishingly, that’s exactly what happens — even after the officers arrive and are told that the three are together and having a supervised parent visit.


I say this is astonishing, but it sure isn’t to Ragland.

“You listen to that 911 call. He says right in there that I’m not doing anything,” Ragland said about the store owner’s call. “But that’s all it takes in America — for you to be black, and to be somewhere you’re not supposed to be. And where you’re supposed to be is not up to you. It’s up to somebody else’s opinion.”


Ragland said he’s used to people questioning what a black man is doing with white families, or supervising kids. But in this case no one at the store bothered to ask — apparently because they were too afraid of him, according to the 911 call.

The store owner, Cruz, said the police call had nothing to do with race. He said the store employees were not aware Ragland was with the mother and son, because he was sitting adjacent to them.


“This is not racial profiling, though,” Cruz said. “I mean I’m Asian, I experience the same thing. It was a misunderstanding, which sometimes do happen.”


One reason this story is potent to me is that it doesn’t conventionally qualify as “news.” There’s no harrowing video of a confrontation, nor did Ragland go to the media (I heard about it from a tip). Ragland also wasn’t arrested, as happened in the infamous Starbucks incident in Philadelphia in April. He says Starbucks flashed through his mind when the officers approached him in Menchie’s, and so he simply … left.
Nobody got “hurt.” But that doesn’t mean it isn’t damaging.

“You want to stand up for yourself, as a man, or as someone who was just doing his job, and say ‘hey, this isn’t right,’ ” he said. “But in the moment I’m thinking: ‘I’m a black man, and If I start emoting, I might not walk out of here.’ And so you rationalize to yourself: ‘What’s the big deal, it’s just Menchie’s, just leave.’ But then later, you realize that you gave in — that you consented that this is the way it’s going to be, to always be.


“Living this kind of mental life will drive a person insane,” he added.

I told Ragland that I would just try to present his story. But I do have questions. Why in the world are the Kirkland police functioning as uncritical mall cops? Why didn’t anybody ask Ragland what was going on? How in the year 2018 are we still this clueless, to the point of being dehumanizing, around the issue of race?

For its part, the Kirkland police announced Saturday, after this column was published online, that it would investigate whether officers followed department protocol.


At the end of our interview, Ragland allowed that listening to the 911 call did make him angry. But he wanted to hide it from me to avoid a whole other stereotype, the “Angry Black Man.” So his reaction came out sad instead.


“How would you feel hearing that you made people so scared and uncomfortable that they called the police?” he said. “For me, that’s just Wednesday. I try not to let it consume me. But it’s hard not to conclude that I walk around in a certain skin, and that’s all that matters.”

As an aside the author make mention of the fact that they did not say Ragland was black until later in the story, but it's in the headline and there is a photo with the story online.  I don't know if that's an editing error or if they changed the headline later like USA Today does sometimes.

[*michaelsean*]

(11-21-2018, 11:26 AM)GMDino Wrote: Thanks for bumping this thread.  I read the following story yesterday and didn't quite know where to post it.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/unwanted-subject-what-led-a-kirkland-yogurt-shop-to-call-police-on-a-black-man/?fbclid=IwAR3KGSPHhXLB8G9V4iz8C9V5_iu05VNXeGOeaFOFwnYa9BIXdSbupKuiTUI



As an aside the author make mention of the fact that they did not say Ragland was black until later in the story, but it's in the headline and there is a photo with the story online.  I don't know if that's an editing error or if they changed the headline later like USA Today does sometimes.

Are we not going to mention the guy named Cruz is Asian?

There's really no way to know about this story, and if his race played apart. These are probably young girls, and if they weren't aware he was with them, then it is odd behavior to go into a yogurt store and not order anything if it's been a decent amount of time. Then they hear stories of people shooting up places (I know they are usually white guys) and who knows where their minds go?