Starbucks Announces Plans to Close Stores Nationwide for an Afternoon to Address Racial Bias Education
Starbucks today announced plans to close all stores for an afternoon to address concerns of racial bias.
By now, you’ve probably heard about the two black men who were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks. Video from the scene immediately went viral and Starbucks issued a statement apologizing for the incident. CEO Kevin Johnson offered an apology of his own, and the manager who called the cops is apparently no longer working there.
Well, following the nationwide coverage of the arrest, Starbucks today announced in a press release that they plan to close “its more than 8,000 company-owned stores in the United States on the afternoon of May 29 to conduct racial-bias education geared toward preventing discrimination in our stores”:
All Starbucks company-owned retail stores and corporate offices will be closed in the afternoon of Tuesday, May 29. During that time, partners will go through a training program designed to address implicit bias, promote conscious inclusion, prevent discrimination and ensure everyone inside a Starbucks store feels safe and welcome…
The curriculum will be developed with guidance from several national and local experts confronting racial bias, including Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Heather McGhee, president of Demos; former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; and Jonathan Greenblatt, ceo of the Anti-Defamation League. Starbucks will involve these experts in monitoring and reviewing the effectiveness of the measures we undertake.
[image via screengrab]
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