Things We Saw Today: Starbucks to Close All 8,000 Locations for One Day to Train Staff About Racial Bias

By now, we’ve all heard about the preposterous incident that occurred at a Philadelphia Starbucks. Last week, two black men entered the Starbucks asking to use the bathroom as they waited for someone, and were denied. When they sat to wait for their friend, a Starbucks employee called the police, and the two men were arrested for trespassing. It’s something that would likely never have happened had it been two white men.

Now, after having met with the two men, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson has announced that on May 19th, all Starbucks locations will be closing for the day to educate their staff on racial bias. It’s certainly a positive step. However we, like columnist Jeneé Osterheldt, have some concerns:

1. I hope @Starbucks takes this beyond a day of training and incorporates it into their corporate values, period.

2. I hope Starbucks is bringing in a trainer of color.

3. What is really being done for the two men wrongly arrested?

4 – infinity. Blackness is not a crime. https://t.co/gpkUsodP1E

— Jeneé Osterheldt (@JeneeinKC) April 17, 2018

(via News Channel 3, Memphis)

• Sailor J. is not having sites like Buzzfeed taking her Twitter threads whole-cloth and making articles out of them. She came for them hard, both on the original offending article, and in yet another Twitter thread. Someone please just give this woman all the money. She’s an established writer and YouTube personality. Not some random “Twitter user.”
• Check out this awesome profile on Lea Kissner, the woman in charge of Google’s internal privacy strike force, NightWatch. (via Gizmodo)
• Wanna read some spoileriffic speculation on Season 9 of The Walking Dead? Check out Den of Geek and why they think the show’s next season might take place during the comic’s most infamous time jump.
• WHAAAT? Evan Rachel Wood won’t be earning pay equal to that of her male co-stars until she starts Season 3 of Westworld. Didn’t HBO know she was the lead of the damn show?! (via Indie Wire)

What have you seen out there today?

(image: Starbucks)

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