Starbucks: Guilty of Racial Profiling or Unfairly Targeted?

First of all, I boycott Starbucks all the time, not because of their treatment of customers but because I won't drink their overpriced burnt coffee and nothing else there is worth forking out the cash at the ridiculous prices they charge.

But, if you are actually a regular patron of Starbucks, should you get all boycotty over the Philly incident?

::sigh::I am so tired of the over-the-top reactions to local issues which blow-up into national race crises demanding us all to enter the race war so provoked by the media and certain political groups. And, before I go on to profile the Starbucks incident, let me state for the record that, yes, of course, any minority group suffers some level of discrimination and ostrasization because they simply are less integrated culturally into the larger group of people. As a minority in the area I live in, I can attest to some of those same problems myself (although, to a more recent degree and not over such an large expanse of time) and, sometimes one does indeed feel less welcome or left out or misunderstood. It is the way society works and one must deal with it and both groups, the majority and the minority, should do their best to make life good.  I love where I live, even though I am a minority (white in a heavily black county) and I take my status in stride and do my best to be a good citizen and not overreact to certain situations or attitudes.

One day I was walking around in a posh area of town, putting fliers in mailboxes in an attempt to find my lost cat. A black woman in a BMW pulled up next to me and asked what I was doing in the area! Why? Because I was a sloppily dressed white woman wandering about in a wealthy black part of town. I told her why and she took a flier and wished me good luck in finding my cat. I could have been all "you are a racist" about the incident but I figured she was concerned that I didn't look like a local resident and was only protecting her neighborhood from harm. Suppose she was right and I was casing the area for future burglaries and I jumped her and started punching her and she pulled a gun out and shot me,  hmmm, would we see a national news story here about racial profiling?

Anyway, to Starbucks. There are three possible versions of what happened here and we have to wait and see what the truth is. We need to find out who the three men involved actually were; the two black men sitting at the tables and the white man who claims to be the friend they were waiting for.

Version One: The most innocent/concerning version would be that two black actual real estate brokers were waiting for a third real estate broker in order to discuss business. They hadn't ordered because they were waiting for their party to arrive before their got their refreshments. While waiting, one needed to use the bathroom and when he attempted to do so, was stopped by the Starbucks' employee and told he could not due to the fact he was not a paying customer at that point. Returning to his seat, he continued to sit without purchasing any drink or snack and he and his friend were asked to leave if they were not going to buy anything. Maybe they said they were waiting for a friend or maybe they didn't, but Starbucks obviously felt they were just loitering which is against policy and asked them to leave. They refused. The police were called. The police asked them to leave. They refused. The police arrested them for trespassing. A white man then stepped in and said he was there and was going to buy them coffee but it was too late.

Was Starbucks wrong? I tend not to think so. First of all, we have no idea what that particular Starbucks has to deal with on a daily basis, how often they have drug users and dealers and homeless guys loitering in their restaurant, bothering people, shooting up drugs in the bathroom, selling drugs in the bathroom and even having sex in the bathroom. If you have to keep your establishment clean and safe, you HAVE to have rules and you HAVE to profile. The rules are simple at Starbucks and meant to prevent problems: one, you must be a paying customer if you want to use the toilets and you must be a paying customer if you want to hand around for any length of time.

These two men knew these rules and they did not abide by either of them. If the "friend they were meeting" was late, they could have gone ahead and ordered some coffee and drank it while they waited and then they also would have had the right to use the bathroom. After all, if they were really real estate brokers, they could have afforded the drinks. Also, they could have simply left the establishment and waited outside for their friend if they were unwilling to make a purchase while they were waiting.

You might say, yeah, but white guys don't get so scrutinized. We don't know that is true. A lot would depend on their behavior as well as how they were dressed. Sorry, but those two guys did not look like real estate brokers to me. Their hair and dress makes me question that. Maybe they are real estate brokers but they kind of looked a bit like bums so that could certainly have influenced the viewpoint of the Starbucks employees. Also, did they speak like professional men or like troublemakers?

If these really were two real estate brokers meeting another real estate broker, then it is my suggestion they follow the rules of the establishment and dress and act better. Believe me, when I have entered an establishment looking less-than-spiffy, I have gotten profiled as well. Once when I was in Costa Rica, I went to a local Taco Bell at midnight after an all-day long grueling drive involving floods, landslides, and mountain fog. Being a vegetarian, that Taco Bell (in a businessman's district, not a tourist area) had only a Cheesy Potato Taco (not even a bean burrito) as a vegetarian choice. I gave the guy a couple dollars and bought two of the little tacos and he told me to wait a minute. Then he came back and pushed a bag toward me and whispered "Here is a little extra food for you." Hah! He thought I was a homeless druggie because why else would a disheveled white woman show up in that area at midnight buying so little food? He may have misprofiled me but I could hardly blame him for his analysis. Likewise, Starbucks MAY have misprofiled these guys but I don't think, if that was the case, they are entirely to blame.

Version Two: The two guys aren't real estate brokers at all. They really were loitering and when they were getting arrested, some white guy decided to fight the fight against racism  and claimed he was coming to meet them and was going to buy them coffee.

Version Three: It is a setup. These guys ARE real estate brokers but planned with a white colleague to set Starbucks up. They dressed down, loitered, tried to use the bathroom, refused to leave, and when the police arrived, signaled the friend to show up. The plan? To prove racism and maybe make a big lawsuit payday.

Which version will turn out to be true? I don't know. We have to wait until all the evidence is in.

All I can say now is that I do not see this as a big racial discrimination moment for Starbucks and I find it rather frustrating that they are apologizing for standing up for their store policy when it was clear there was a store policy and these two men violated it. The police also have nothing to apologize for as they were doing their job and were quite polite about it.

As I keep saying, I am all for pointing out true racial discrimination and true police misconduct but if the country keeps using poor examples as race problems, they are only fanning the flames and causing a race war and this is NOT how to make things better.


Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
April 15, 2018