Starbucks And Bathrooms: A Tale Of Manufactured Outrage
There was an incident a few days ago about two black men who got arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, PA.
Why does it matter that they're black? Well, we'll get into that.
Here's video of the two men being arrested:
Now, when I first heard about this incident, the first thing I saw was this video.
Of course, I was upset by it. Within the isolated parameters of this video, it looks like an abuse of authority -- big time. And that's something I absolutely despise.
Protests
As you can see in this video, protestors were activated and began doing what they do: manufacture outrage to get attention.
Even though I hate police abuse, I also hate manufactured outrage.
This sort of manufactured outrage is designed to lead cultural narratives through a news cycle to lay seeds of manipulation in the minds of the common man.
In this case, the narrative is intended to make people feel like we're still under Jim Crow, and two men were targeted and arrested simply because they are black.
I'll get into what actually happened at that Starbucks on that day, but first I'd like to ask: why would a narrative want people to feel guilty?
Well...
Guilt is a powerful tool to leverage
A Twitter user called Hotep Jesus made this tweet where he goes into a Starbucks and requests his free "Starbucks reparations" coffee.
SPOILER: he gets the coffee.
And, in the same vain as Hotep Jesus up there, not to let the opportunity to troll go to waste:
Six days after two African American men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks, an Internet hoax is falsely suggesting the company has issued a coupon that entitles African Americans to free coffee.
...
The coupons, which are circulating on social media, say the holder is entitled to one free drink “Limited to persons of African American heritage and/or identity.” Many use the phrase, “The best dialogue starts over a cup of coffee, and we’d like to buy you one.”
Fake coupons are popping up promising free Starbucks coffee for African Americans
Here's Hotep Jesus on Fox News explaining why he did what he did:
As I was looking for these videos, I saw this clip of him on InfoWars, going into further detail:
Hotep Jesus has a book on marketing, so I'm pretty convinced that this is all a lesson for his audience about the efficacy of his techniques. However, he is bringing up an interesting point about how manufactured outrage is used to manipulate culture for political reasons.
So what actually happened?
Information about how things actually went down at Starbucks is surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) not forthcoming.
Here is Commissioner Richard Ross of the Philadelphia Police Department making a statement about the incedent:
According to employees, they had seen these two males come in, they sat down, and after being seated, they decided that they needed to use the restroom. Starbucks says that according to their company policy, they do not allow non-paying members of the public to come in and use the restroom. They then asked these two males to leave. These two males refuse to leave. … When the police were summoned to the scene they get there and they get this story. … They then approach the males, they ask the males to leave because they’re being asked to leave by Starbucks employees, in fact in an effort to quell the situation, the officers actually called for a supervisor. …Three different occasions, the officers asked the males politely to leave the location. … Instead, the males continued to refuse, as they had told the employees previously, and they told the officers that they were not leaving. When the call was initially made, the Starbucks employees had told the males that they were going to call police, and they said, "Go ahead call the police, we don’t care." So police get there and they’re confronted by the same kind of attitude, and they’re repeatedly told they’re not leaving.
Emphasis mine.
Here is the call to police, dispatches, and officer transmissions:
As we can see, the reason that the police were called in the first place is because the men were trying to use the bathroom without buying anything and were refusing to leave the premises.
There is good reason for bathroom policy
This is a very common policy in the US, especially in major metro areas.
I used to work in retail and food service. I can speak from personal experience that even in a smaller town where many people know each other and the bathrooms are generally open to the public, the most insane things would happen in there. People caught having sex, people smearing poop on the walls, people throwing poop covered paper all over the floors, people using drugs.
And it's not just my own personal experience. I'm sure that anyone who's worked in the service industry can share horror stories about the things that wend down in their bathrooms.
DALLAS (Reuters) - A dead man was found in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus at a Dallas maintenance facility on Wednesday, the company said.
Maintenance workers noticed the bathroom door was locked, wedged it open and discovered the body inside, according to spokeswoman Lanesha Gipson.
A Dead Body Was Found In The Bathroom Of A Greyhound Bus
People use Grayhound busses to take drugs in and die, and because of that there is now a policy that if someone is in the bathroom for too long a period of time, the driver will stop the bus and will open the bathroom to make sure people aren't killing themselves.
So, there's a good reason for these policies, especially in places where there might be disturbed people like in urban areas. And the manager at the Starbucks was calling the police because the men were trying to use the bathroom and refused to pay for anything, and then refused to leave after they were asked to.
They also refused to leave after the manager warned them about the police coming. And then refused to leave 3 times by the police after they arrived on the scene.
So that's about the size of the situation
As of the time of this writing, these men have received apologies from Starbucks CEO and the Philadelphia Police Commissioner for the way this incident was handled.
And I understand that: it could have been handled better.
However, the backlash of this story is huge, and it's pushing an incorrect narrative about this being a "sitting-while-black" situation: just two black men minding their own business when suddenly the racist store manager calls the racist cops to take them to racist jail. That, I do not buy.
But I also admit that I don't have all of the evidence. There must be store surveillance footage that would show us exactly what happened. But we are currently not privy to that footage, and I don't feel very confident that we ever will be.
What do you think?
What are your thoughts on this situation?
Where do you stand, if anywhere?
I'll see you in the comments!
Images from the fantastic https://pixabay.com/
I think there is a subconscious bias against African-Americans in some parts of the country, usually areas where people of other races were raised to be afraid of men of their color (it always seems to be the men, not the African-American women, who are subject to this kind of treatment). Having grown up in the south, I have seen it, and was even told as a kid that you don't let black people in your house, and that they are to be viewed as suspicious if they are in your neighborhood. I HOPE I've overcome that....I've definitely tried to. After living in the northeast for several years, and then coming back to the south, I DO see black males being treated differently than other people. It is happening. It is a thing, and we need to work to overcome it.
As a white woman, I've been to plenty of Starbucks and other restaurants and fast food places and arrived first to wait for friends. Plenty of times, I've ordered nothing, or only a free glass of water, while I waited, and all I had to do was say I was waiting for people before ordering, and it was all cool. And, I can't even count the number of times I've used a restaurant bathroom while on road trips....almost always without ordering. I just go in, use it, and leave. No one EVER says anything.
So, when I see something like this happening with black men doing the same thing I and my friends do all the time with no issue, I can't help but think the manager who called the police had some inherent, and maybe unknown, bias against black men.
These guys were right....they weren't doing ANYTHING wrong.
And, on a side note, what about all of the protests against the Vietnam war in the 60's and 70's? Do you think that was manufactured outrage, too? I don't. I think those protesters were exercising a Constitutional right, and they had a very valid point in what they were protesting.
Same here. There are lots of places in the country that don't have locks on bathrooms and don't require purchase for use of bathrooms. I grew up in such a place. Most places you stop at in between destinations (aka: "flyover country") are like this, usually because they are small towns that don't generally have problems with people violating bathrooms.
I've also been to plenty of places that require purchase to use bathrooms. In those cases, I purchase something and use the bathroom. I don't do what these guys did: Ask to use the bathroom, get told I needed to buy something to use it, refuse to buy anything and sit back down, then be told by employees that if I don't buy anything I'll be considered as trespassing and the cops will be called, refuse again to leave or buy anything, have cops called and when the cops come and give me three opportunities to leave I refuse them all, then get arrested.
I've never done anything like that. I wouldn't think to do something like that. I'd wager that you have never done anything like that either and wouldn't imagine doing anything like that. Objectively, that has nothing to do with race. They weren't arrested for being black. There's a a whole series of events that explain why the incident happened, and it makes sense.
Considering all of that and the degree to and speed of which the media jumped on this to force a narrative tells me it's manufactured.
I have no idea. That's not something I've looked into. There are many manufactured protests these days, however.
Racism is the evil
if the incident is anyhow affected by the color or race of those guys, it's disgraced
but we can't see the results in a parallel world! And we judge this is because of the color and race, with the bias we have in our mind from past memories...
So the truth is not very clear.
I upvoted your post because of the effort you put in it, but honestly I prefered you had a more nuetral explanation.
We have to tolerate more and teach everyone to love more. Hate and racism will make nothing better in our planet.
There's something really wrong with the us. False outrage and manufactured sentiments is not new, but apparently it has been taken to another dimension where you can escape with anything just for claiming oppressed. I find the Starbucks issue disgusting
People have discovered that outrage can be culturally weaponized in a very effective way. They were only guessing before, but now it's down to a precise science.
Narrative shapers can control groups of people like puppet masters.
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Man, that video of the guy getting his "reparation coffee" is so cringe.
He's hilarious!
Starbucks really takes advantage of the situation, after the closure have flown with an aggressive marketing policy, advertising experts know that these cases usually involve forceful actions.
Beyond the case I think it is exaggerated and that the media act with double standards, if the case is sincere I feel sorry for men but there are also policies in the use of bathrooms and common areas. A business wants to sell that simple.
No one remembers when Starbucks limited the Wi-Fi for only customers for a while, nobody said anything, that corporate policy, just that.
I do not support racism but there are more important things, coincidentally the fact involves a global chain. The media and their cases, nothing happens by chance.
In two weeks nobody will remember the people of the incident, but Starbucks will have a new corporate world code, will be able to make publicity campaigns and many other things.
Soon we will see a TV commercial where they show smiling black people drinking coffee and at the end of the stage they will show the bathrooms
Best regards, great analysis, interesting post. The debate allows us to learn and communicate.
Sorry to use a translator.
I think you're right!
This NEVER happens to me. I am white. I got to Coffee shops every day to work. Not once has anything like this happened. I often sit down and wait for someone I am meeting, before deciding to buy anything. This incident happened because the Black men were profiled by the manager and then the way the Cops treated them subsequently.
Moreover, you are quick and easy to accept the narrative of the Police. Are you a White American? We often do this based on our experience. You should go beyond the breakdown of a random internet troll and FOX's Laura Ingraham. If she was the Barista at Starbucks no doubt she would tell them to "Shut Up and Buy Something."
Nobody bothered them until they tried to use the bathroom without buying anything. It's a very common policy, especially in major cities, to require purchase to use bathrooms. When they refused to buy anything or leave, they were trespassing. The employee told them they called the cops because they were trespassing, they didn't care. The cops gave them three chances to leave, they didn't care. Then they were arrested.
Have you ever done anything like that?
I'm going to disregard your comments about my race and my personal experience with police.
You provide an interesting treatment of the story. I was working on a post about this as well but I’m not sure it will see the light of day. I teach at Community College of Philadelphia, and I brought up the situation in three of my classes. My students opinions ranged from, yes, it’s definitely an example of implicit bias, to, yeah, probably an example. If you are black you’ve very likely experienced this sort of treatment in public. So, what is interesting to me is that this exact situation might not be the best example of implicit bias and profiling, but that ends up being beside the point, because we ultimately can’t really separate the micro from the macro. I compare it to how a couple might argue about a chore in the house. If one person points out a specific example of the other not doing their share of the work, it can almost always be argued that it’s no big deal. “Are you hassling me about the dishes again?!” But what the person is really trying to point out is a pattern of disrespect. In general, the general public has a hard time accepting that there are patterns of micro aggression type abuse. I’ve seen it many times that someone pointing out an example like the Starbucks situation is accused of just trying to sow division. There are a lot of people that literally don’t think racism exists. So although I agree with your argument that the protesters are sowing manufactured rage, I can also totally appreciate their desire to take advantage of a viral story to push the narrative that things are pretty screwed up. There are two different stories. One is that what happened at Starbucks might be an example of what black people experience daily. The other is that black people experience implicit bias and racism all the time.
Forgot to add: one detail that hasn’t come out through the media treatment of this is that the policy to boot people who don’t buy anything was apparently just imposed three months ago. This detail came from a student of mine who works at a different Starbucks in Philly but knows, and has worked for the manager in question. This student (a black male, incidentally) said a) the manager is definitely not racist (and in his opinion she just made an embarrassing mistake and he feels bad for her) and b) that everyone working at Starbucks knew it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. So, on one hand, maybe these two guys pushed the situation on purpose to test the policy and then make a scene. Or maybe it was that they had sat in Starbucks before, and even used the bathroom, without paying in the past. There are a lot of maybes, as you point out as well. My gut tells me these two men pushed the scenario a bit, but again, sometimes that is what we do in conflict to draw attention to a bigger pattern of disrespect. Personally, no matter what the truth of this one situation is, I’m glad it helped raised awareness. The bias that people of color experience is just such a drain on everyone effected by it, so Starbucks being forced into addressing is ultimately a positive thing, in my opinion.