What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings of the past — as well as the police brutality and mass incarceration of the present — is the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time, in any place, for little reason — whether that means being kicked out of stores, suspended from school, priced out of their neighborhoods, locked up in jail or put in the grave....There are over 900 comments, and I haven't read them all, but I have put them in the order of "most liked" and read a lot of them, and nobody seems even to acknowledge Attiah's idea. They're all back at the original Starbucks incident, picking into the merits of whether people can sit in the café without ordering anything. One of the most-liked comments is:
Starbucks will do what it needs to do to protect its brand. But what is America doing to protect its own citizens of color?... And how can we up the social and legal costs for people who make life-threatening decisions by calling the police on peaceful black people?
Oh my lord, give me a break already. Nobody has a right to plant themselves in a private establishment without even paying for a cup of coffee. The managers character has been unfairly denigrated, and by extension every Starbucks employee, and the cowardly response of ceo is to virtue signal. Want to hang around? Buy a bloody muffin. Stop blaming others for consequences of your actions.The most-liked item responds to that:
For everyone flogging the “you don’t have the right to loiter” line, STARBUCKS says we do and these guys did. Starbucks says they routinely allow - even encourage - people to hang out at their stores. It’s part of their brand.And the comments go on and on over this debate. I haven't encountered anyone dealing with what Attiah called "the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time" — that there's an insidious, pervasive system encompassing everything from murder to expensive real estate.
So STARBUCKS says these guys did nothing wrong and the manager inappropriately called the police. Why are you people so invested in blaming the black guys when the establishment whose side you’re taking IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE??
I reordered the comments to put the newest one first, and I did get something addressing Attiah's big reach. Somebody called all-comments-matter quotes Attiah's "What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings of the past" for the purpose of decisively rejecting it:
Think rationally for a moment about the 2 things that Attiah is attempting to connect on some equivalent level...and tell me, honestly with a straight face, that you can take this seriously.
Posts
136 comments:
The commenters are more interested in establishing the facts of the matter – or more precisely, their facts of the matter – than in dealing with the vaporings of some no-account electron-stained wretch.
The connection is blacks treated differently to their disadvantage.
Today's problem is Bayes' Theorem. It makes good sense to suspect blacks are more likely to cause trouble, in the absence of individual information to the contrary.
Dress like a white person and you get treated better. You're carrying another marker besides black then. Bayes' theorem works for you instead of against you.
Black leaders on TV acting other than angry, stupid and dangerous would help all blacks. Change the meaning of the black marker.
Two black loiterers asked to leave a Starbucks is a national story for several days in a row and Starbucks is going to eat $tens of millions to close down stores so they can virtue signal that this is "not who we are." If this is 21st century version of lynchings I guess I can live with it without losing much sleep.
The electron-stained wretch has strained himself.
The way of the world, generally, is that you will be treated well if you benefit people. You will not be treated well if you are a costly annoyance. This applies to individuals and groups.
A group certainly can exercise power in spite of being uneconomical and annoying, by exploiting votes or guilt or threatening violence, but the sort of "good treatment" you will get from that is going to be grudging or counterproductive.
I haven't encountered anyone dealing with what Attiah called "the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time"
Were that true we would not still be subjected to Maxine Waters.
I don't know what happened at that Starbucks in Philadelphia before the police were called. According to one account I read, the men asked for the key to the restroom and were refused the key because they weren't paying customers. It escalated from there. If I go into an establishment to use the restroom, I buy something. There are low-priced items at Starbucks. If they'd bought bottles of water they'd have been customers and there would have been no problem.
But for Starbucks to close ALL their outlets for "anti-racism" training based on this one incident is ridiculous. Making a national uproar over a minor local incident doesn't help race relations at all. And comparing this to a lynching is offensive to the memories of people who were actually murdered because of their skin color.
Loitering implies you have made a transaction and you are staying longer than normal after you have consumed that purchase. There isn't a single restaurant that encourages people to come in and occupy seat/table without a purchase. Race is irrelevant until anyone can prove otherwise. Vagrants should be welcome at the WaPo now. Spread the word. They should ask for cots and Whole Food meals, as well.
"the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time" — that there's an insidious, pervasive system encompassing everything from murder to expensive real estate.
Its nonsense on stilts. And most people don't believe it. The national reaction to the incident in question demonstrates that. And besides that, its blacks who are mostly killing blacks. Just as it is whites who are mostly killing whites.
The ironic thing is, if you just buy a cup of coffee, most coffee shops will let you sit there all day with your laptop and act like it's your office or study hall.
Tank suspects there is more to this story. We may or may not ever learn what really happened.
Interesting that Starbucks created the conditions for this SJW firestorm by encouraging patrons to chill in big chairs with free WiFi. The brand exudes a feeling of "that guy in the hipster jeans with a venti macchiato and staring intently at his MacBook is on the cusp of completing his bestselling Pulitzer-worthy novel about a guy in hipster jeans..."
Their message has brought them huge presence and revenues. But it has created certain, fairly modest, expectations about permitted behavior.
I anticipate an easy technical fix. Just subscribe to the new website "Boulevardier.com" and you can loiter for up to an hour free of charge at participating stores. Easy payment plans available; or you can just agree to have your personal data scraped, and become a paid-up member.
Dennis Prager: "Starbucks managers who have to attend their “re-education” training at the end of May should ask their diversity master this question: exactly what did the manager in Philadelphia do wrong?"
Hey, we all want to know.
Starbucks says they routinely allow - even encourage - people to hang out at their stores.
... eating muffins and drinking coffee.
There is noting in Starbucks corporate strategy whereby people of the neighborhood OCCUPY STARBUCKS to make it more difficult for paying customers to enjoy their purchases.
Given their recent virtue signaling, however, I look forward to homeless people camping out in their stores for extended periods whenever it suits them to do so.
Go woke, you know the rest.
Attiah is what normal people call "stupid." If anybody can be eliminated at any time, it's poor people of all colors. Are there really people who believe that if the cops had been called on to eject a couple of obnoxious white guys, they wouldn't have done it?
Wasn't Starbucks lecturing Americans on their racism just a few years ago?
If I was a Starbucks manager, and a guy or guys came in and just sat there, not ordering, I would figure that they were waiting for the place to empty so they could do a strongarm robbery.
For everyone flogging the “you don’t have the right to loiter” line, STARBUCKS says we do and these guys did. Starbucks says they routinely allow - even encourage - people to hang out at their stores. It’s part of their brand.
Is this true. It should be easy enough to get an answer.
If it is true, can someone go to a downtown Starbucks and count the homeless sitting there.
...uses the incident as a jumping off point for challenging, big ideas:
Uh oh. "Challenging". We all know what "challenging" signifies in Althouse speak. And not only challenging, but "big"!. That means an extra large serving of tripe awaits, I guess.
But having read the post, I begin to suspect that our hostess has begun to use "challenging" trollingly.
You have to ask for the restroom key? Is that normal in Starbucks? Or is this in an area with a lot of restroom drug use or hook-ups that they're trying to limit?
Tank suspects there is more to this story. We may or may not ever learn what really happened.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a setup. Couple of activist act obnoxious in order to trigger an incident. Bad publicity ensues, big corporation has to start paying out money to various activists linked organizations to quell the uproar. The Rainbow Coalition used to run that way. Al Sharpton used that method pretty often as well.
To answer my own question. Starbucks does allow people to use the restaurant without paying. So now I see why blacks are upset.
https://www.cnet.com/news/starbucks-stay-as-long-as-you-want/
Recently met a client at a Starbucks because it was convenient for both of us. I hate their coffee and almost never go there. But I bought a cup because I was using their space.
Will Cuppy wrote of the hog-nosed snake, a harmless garden toad eater, that when threatened it puffs itself up like a deadly African puff-adder, and then wonders why people kill it.
Karen Attiah is the problem. How can she even write such stuff? Lynching and loitering are not the same.
It’s still okay to say “denigrate “?
You have to ask for the restroom key? Is that normal in Starbucks?
That struck me as odd as well. I've never been in a Starbucks. My wife has and doesn't remember having to ask for a key to the bathroom, but wouldn't swear to it. Like you, it strikes me as something you do to keep homeless people from using it since it would be a hassle. By the way, its not just in the US where you are expected to buy something in a cafe/diner/restaurant before using the bathroom. That is universal. I've been in Europe and Asia and they reserve restrooms for paying customers as well.
Blogger Katherine said...
. . .
But for Starbucks to close ALL their outlets for "anti-racism" training based on this one incident is ridiculous. Making a national uproar over a minor local incident doesn't help race relations at all.
This is how the pros operate. They turned what may have been an isolated incident at a single Starbucks into a problem for all of Starbucks. Starbucks then turned it into an "American" problem (hence the Attiah column). And at each step the enabler is the media, which is populated by lunatics who believe that two black guys getting kicked out of a Starbucks, legally, no question, is the return of Jim Crow.
Now my next question. Can I bring my own food and coffee to Starbucks.
Here in little old Canada, it's been in the news that all coffee chains are trying to reduce the incidence of people hanging around, ordering little or nothing. "Working from home," sitting and staring at a laptop, conducting job interviews or whatever. Sometimes just teens hanging out--their behaviour may not be all that welcoming to other customers. The Starbucks idea of a third space, not home and not work, may never have worked from a business perspective (even with Starbucks charging a fortune for a cup of coffee served by people speaking Esperanto), and it's probably on its way out. By Ockham's Razor, all of this provides an explanation for asking people to leave before you get to racism, much less next stop is lynching.
To answer my own question. Starbucks does allow people to use the restaurant without paying. So now I see why blacks are upset.
From the article:
"We strive to create a welcoming environment for all of our customers. We do not have any time limits for being in our stores, and continue to focus on making the Third Place experience for every Starbucks customer."
I think the operative word there is "customers." From reading the article my sense is that if you come into the store in the morning and buy a single cup of coffee, you can stay all day if you like. I note that Starbucks wifi is only free for the first two hours and then they expect you to pay for that.
Surely somebody here has been in a Starbuck and used the bathroom. Did you have to ask for a key?
It's time for a national conversation about coffee houses!
I note that Starbucks wifi is only free for the first two hours and then they expect you to pay for that.
Bring more than one laptop. I assume they use the MAC address, unique to every laptop wifi.
Or perhaps just a handful of USB wifi adapters to plug into the same laptop.
Karen Attiah is the problem. How can she even write such stuff? Lynching and loitering are not the same.
She has been carefully indoctrinated to believe that blacks in the US are in a position just as bad as before the civil rights movement. What's the old saw about a movement becoming a racket?
I have a brand new starbucks restroom you have a brand new key.
"the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time"
Obviously not true to any rational observant person who leaves their cocoon for any length of time.
Bring more than one laptop. I assume they use the MAC address, unique to every laptop wifi.
Or perhaps just a handful of USB wifi adapters to plug into the same laptop.
That's way to much bother. Just change the MAC address. Here's how to do it in Windows and OS X.
https://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-change-mac-address/
Althouse, I don't think you're allowed to loiter in a comments section. Post something!
Blogger rhhardin said...
I note that Starbucks wifi is only free for the first two hours and then they expect you to pay for that.
Bring more than one laptop. I assume they use the MAC address, unique to every laptop wifi
There are free utilities that will allow you to spoof MAC addresses.
And that is why no one is addressing the article's "physically eliminated at any time" assertion, because it is so far from reality that it isn't worth debating.
As usual, The Onion is on it: Impoverished Kenyan Bean Picker Can’t Wait To See What Starbucks Has To Say About Racial Sensitivity
Like I said, I've never been in a Starbucks, but since spoofing a MAC address is so easy, my guess is that you have to login to an account to use their WIFI and the accounts access is metered.
You know, McDonalds has free wifi, not metered as far as I know, and way better coffee. Dunkin Donuts as well.
"Surely somebody here has been in a Starbuck and used the bathroom. Did you have to ask for a key?" Yup. It has a combination, changed every day. You ask them for it, you peer at you to be sure you're a customer, like at least about to get in line, and they give it to you.
It's a little bit of a pain, because if I need the bathroom it's when I first arrive; I don't generally hang around once I have my frappuccino. Obviously they do not want non-customers using the bathroom.
As for hanging around without buying anything, obviously it's a judgment call by the manager. If the place is empty, great. Eventually they'll buy something. If actual customers have nowhere to sit, not so great; eventually the manager will need to do something about it. I don't believe Starbucks when they say they don't care at all.
I spend time near the beach in CA -- less time lately. There are many street people, and they are not the poor veterans or evicted widows and children but rather young , white, able-bodied men, many with a fondness for meth. There is a punch code to get into the restroom, and for good reason. If those denizens filled the place, the coffee drinkers would move down the street to the Peet's.
I don't know what happened in this instance, but African Americans are sensitive to this treatment, with cause. If I were the manager, I think I would have given the guy the key.
That said, Philly is a tough place.
I do not like pickles so I order my hamburgers "through the garden," but no pickles.
This I soon found is considered un-American in this country. My hamburger would come with pickles, and I would protest and send it back. The waitress would take it to the back, remove the pickles, and return with the same burger, well soaked in pickle juice.
I would again protest and insist on getting a burger with no taint of pickles. The waitress would consult with the manager, and the manager would tell me to leave the establishment.
So I did as requested, and after the first two-three times learned to just think of something else and just eat my burger as delivered. Problem solved.
The two black men at Starbucks violated store policy, argued with the staff and refused to leave, so staff called the cops. That is the other way such situations are resolved.
Back when the Trayvon Martin thing was happening Black activists were pushing the notion that white people would occasionally decide to go out & hunt down and kill random black men, just because, and that the police would cover up the murder, just because. Even the black cops would cover up the crimes of these white people hunting black men and boys like game animals. No one would tell these activists "you are a f*ckin' nutbag!"
Did you know that the cashew nuts shells are highly caustic and the people who pick them have health issues because of that.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/11577928/Blood-cashews-the-toxic-truth-about-your-favourite-nut.html
Kind of puts getting kicked out of Starbucks in perspective.
The only person I felt sorry for was the poor guy who happened to be working when the activists showed up at that Philly Starbucks with a bullhorn. A guy earning about $12 a hour to make mocha lattes clearly was one of those privileged white males, and so had to put up with being screamed at though a bullhorn and treated as though he was Bull Connor. I imagine him repeating to himself "Can't walk out, gotta make the rent, gotta pay the bills, can't walk out,....,"
And while these activist fools scream about their right to park their asses in a coffee shop for hours without paying for anything, illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from poor blacks. The blacks are supporting a party which will marginalize them even more as the Hispanics become the new pet minority. But hey, who cares? Because fuck you, whitey. Gee, do you think blacks will be able to lay a guilt trip on Hispanic voters when Hispanics become the majority? The stupidity is breathtaking.
"I came here for an argument"
On the question about locked bathrooms, it seems to depend on the location of the Starbucks. In downtown Rockville,MD location you have to get the code while at several other locations a few miles away (still in Rockville but in the area they have been trying to rebrand as North Bethesda) the two Starbucks I frequent do not have locked restrooms.
I haven't encountered anyone dealing with what Attiah called "the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time" — that there's an insidious, pervasive system encompassing everything from murder to expensive real estate.
Anyone can be eliminated from private property at any time. And non-customers can certainly be eliminated from a business at any time. Most have the good sense to leave when asked, so the police are never involved. Or if the police are involve, then they leave when the police tell them to, so no arrests happen.
The real question is was the Starbucks manager discriminating based on race? In other words, if white non-customers dressed and behaved the same way, would the manager have asked them to leave ( and call the police if they didn't )? We can't know the answer based on this one incident. ( Would not surprise me at all if the decision was race-based. There are plenty of liberals who love blacks, but only in theory, and only at a distance )
Seems like a good hidden-camera experiment: Send in a variety of people ( white, black, hispanic, male, female, young, old, nicely-dressed, poorly dressed ) to hang out, not buy anything, ask to use the restroom. Record the whole thing. See who is accommodated and who is asked to leave.
Can't run this test at Starbucks at this point, but plenty of other places let customers hang out for a while.
Of course, I wouldn't trust the results from most of the groups who might try to run such a test. Easy enough to report the cases of a minority getting kicked out, but not report the white guy getting the same treatment. Or to have someone behave badly to get themselves thrown out, but not include that behavior in the reporting.
The manager may have been officious. The pissers may have been pissers. There are other possible explanations other than racism.......In NYC, you don't need a key. There's always a line, and you don't have to buy anything while waiting in line.
"What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings of the past — as well as the police brutality and mass incarceration of the present — is ...
... just when I stopped reading.
My White Guilt American Express card has been overdrawn for some time.
It was overused by those in the grievance industry, possibly starting with Jesse Jackson who got his son a lucrative Budweiser distributorship as a payoff.
"Conditions in Vietnam may be even worse than in India. Cashews are sometimes shelled by drug addicts in forced labour camps, who are beaten and subjected to electric shocks. Time magazine has described this trade as “blood cashews”."
In NYC all the ones I've been to say restrooms are for customers only. Some you need to get a key
So it would seem whether or not you need a key or keypad number depends on where the store is located. So, trying to keep out the homeless.
I noticed last year, in Bataan province, that many small farmers were planting cashew on hilly land.
Where they used to plant Robusta coffee for instance.
Lots of cashew available on the roadside stands.
Cashew is becoming a big deal in tropical agriculture.
Many stores and especially restaurants care a lot about who is seen to be patronizing them.
You will notice this in most of Asia, if you pay attention. Don't be clueless when you are being treated especially well.
This is one of those things where there is, often enough, genuine "white privilege".
White people as patrons raise the status of the establishment.
So if you are white, or can pass, you will get better service.
The street people can now hang out at Starbucks instead of public libraries.
Dear Starbucks: Don't lock the restrooms. Problem solved.
"So if you are white, or can pass, you will get better service."
Even sailors?
Several Starbucks in Seattle have, like, locked bathrooms to keep out the homeless and and the ave rat kids.
I was at one on University Ave when a young homeless dude was making a scene about wanting to use the bathroom.
Several people sitting there were, like, saying 'just let him use the bathroom'.
So they let him use the bathroom. He was in there for a while, then left with wet hair.
A little bit later a customer comes to the counter after going into the bathroom and says the bathroom is, like, awful. A mess in the sink, shit in an unflushed toilet.
The manager then has one of the employees go to clean it up, which he obviously isn't looking forward to doing: he's probably thinking, like, you let the dude in there, you go clean it up.
All the people who were saying 'just let him use the bathroom' were keeping their mouth shut. Pussies.
I post my shit here.
Starbucks loiterer: Can I have the restroom code?
Starbucks manager: Numba one or numba two?
Starbucks loiterer: Um...I cannot tell a lie. It's a numba two.
Starbucks manager: No.
Starbucks loiterer: Racist.
Why is liberal Starbucks so racist towards innocent black people?
In Texas, restrooms at Starbucks aren't locked. And there is a growing competition among gas stations to provide large and clean restrooms, because they have discovered that people will stop, come inside, and perhaps loiter afterwards and buy a few things before leaving.
Maybe Ann and Meade stopped by a Bucee's while in Texas?
As for they "lynching", I agree with those above that note calling this particular incident a lynching is degrading the serious and ugly nature of what lynching actually was. It's as bad an over-the-top metaphor as calling all forms of unwanted romantic advances as the exact same as rape.
I should also note that most Denny's in Texas don't even have locks on the front door or restrooms.
Maybe the northeast should have a conversation about why they need to lock restrooms?
Ron Winkleheimer said...
Did you know that the cashew nuts shells are highly caustic and the people who pick them have health issues because of that.
Walnuts grow with a flesh around the nut that is a skin irritant, and also stains your skin. You can remove the flesh from a few bare-handed, but it would be a problem handling them all day without gloves.
They smell absolutely wonderful. I started 3 walnut trees from nuts last year, I'm still waiting to see if they survived the winter. Seeing as how it is snowing today, I guess I'm still waiting to see if I survived the winter.
Stuff White People Like - #1 Coffee
#1.5 - Starbucks bathrooms that don't look like crime scenes.
Starbucks has set themselves up for disaster. There now advertising to the world that they are the equivalent of a bus stop, library or a shelter.
"the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time" by other blacks.
Whenever I feel a temporary loss of self-confidence, I read the Washington Post comments to remind myself of how morally and intellectually superior I truly am.
I can save readers of this blog a lot of time. 95% of WaPo comments are either Comment 1 or Comment 2 below:
Comment 1: At last, this is the smoking gun. Drumpf will not survive until Christmas.
Comment 2: You're a racist. (No, you're a racist.)
Just figure out which one of these is appropriate to the story you are reading.
"Karen Attiah is The Washington Post's Global Opinions Editor", amazingly enough.
"challenging, big ideas"
AKA "paranoid, false ideas".
rhhardin said...
I have a brand new starbucks restroom you have a brand new key.
Win!!
The first thing Starbucks did wrong was mess with Trump. The Trump Effect Hall of Shame. (The Trump Effect holds that engaging in a feud with Donald John Trump increases the chances of something bad happening to you, while he rolls merrily along the way.) Here is the list.
http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2018/04/evan-mcmullin-feels-trump-effect.html#more
I'm in Starbucks all the time. I'm a freelance writer, and I don't like working at home, so I'm a WiFi warrior. I'm familiar with the dynamics.
I ALWAYS buy something. If there's lots of space, fine. If it gets crowded and people need to sit down, I take a break. Go get lunch, go to the gym, whatever.
Most locations don't have locked restrooms. Some locations should. Local non-paying homeless folks come in and tie up the bathrooms for crazy long periods of time because they use them to do all their personal hygiene in.
Some young people who live in tents behind one of my local strip malls often come in and charge their cell phones. But these particular people are normally courteous and don't cause problems, other than tying up the single restroom for personal hygiene.
In a couple of cases one of them fell asleep and urinated in the comfy chair next to me, so she was asked to leave, after a couple of customers alerted the manager.
Some high-traffic locations with lots of local vagrants and lots of foot traffic will have locks on the restroom doors. With good reason. One location right on Young Circle in downtown Hollywood, Florida is like this. But that area is a regular den of iniquity. It would be very difficult for regular paying customers to enjoy that location if management didn't exercise some discretion and control.
But well-behaved vagrants who come in and ask for a courtesy water and who sit down for a reasonable amount of time don't have a problem, and I've always seen them treated very well by the staff.
It's why I don't boycott Starbucks: The senior management drives me nuts with their stupidity. But they have some terrific local staff, and I want them to have jobs.
The local staff could give some lessons in tolerance and diversity to the senior management.
I live in Portland. Attiah has a point.
White people really do move away from black people. John Derbyshire said the same thing before he got fired. He called Americans racists after comparing housing prices to the percentage of black children in the local school system.
Yeah, racism exists. Why?
I don't work at Starbucks. I rented an office desk to avoid Starbucks. The people saying "buy a muffin" are cheap.
To answer my own question. Starbucks does allow people to use the restaurant without paying. So now I see why blacks are upset.
Even if it were true that this is official policy, the fact is this was one manager who might have shown poor judgment (depending on the circumstances). How many white people have also been asked to leave this or any Starbucks? No one knows because there's no 'story' to those incidents.
Poor black people. They sure do have it rough.
He called Americans racists after comparing housing prices to the percentage of black children in the local school system.
Did he control for differences in income per capita? In local crime rates? I doubt it.
James K-
Gee, income per capita and crime rates are correlated with the number of black people. How interesting!
That's the Derbyshire answer. That's part of why he got fired.
Black people have a lower status, so the rules are enforced differently on them. That's not right. If white folks would not have been removed from the Starbucks by the cops, then the black folks are right to complain. And that seems to have been the case. The end.
When it comes to the law, we should all be equal.
"If white folks would not have been removed from the Starbucks by the cops, then the black folks are right to complain. "
IF.
Think rationally for a moment about the 2 things that Attiah is attempting to connect on some equivalent level...and tell me, honestly with a straight face, that you can take this seriously.
Well there’s at least one intelligent commentator reading the Post online. I’m old enough to remember real lynchings, and using the police to escort trespassers from the premises is nothing like what happened to Emmett Till.
John Lynch said...
And that seems to have been the case.
Why does that seem to you to have been the case?
I would not be at all surprised if that was the case. But I don't have enough information to know if that was the case. Do you know of any cases where white non-customers asked to use the bathroom and were not asked to leave? ( or asked to leave, refused, and the cops weren't called? )
Karen Attiah so wishes she lived during the horrible days of Jim Crow, the days that live there in her fevered brain. Because more than once, more than a thousand times, a white person has been denied access to a bathroom because they were not customers. Her statement.
"the basic fact that black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time, in any place, for little reason — whether that means being kicked out of stores, suspended from school, priced out of their neighborhoods, locked up in jail or put in the grave...."
Insane people talk like this. Blacks are becoming something of a wearout. But a black friend has invited us to worship with her this Sunday at her church and we are excited to accept.
"If white folks would not have been removed from the Starbucks by the cops, then the black folks are right to complain. And that seems to have been the case. The end."
Cop:"But, Mister Starbucks manager, you know that we can't ask these folks to leave! They are white!"
What a weird fantasy world John Lynch lives in.
I am considering collecting a batch of our local black and crazy homeless and explaining that they can camp as long as they like inside the warm in winter and cool in summer Starbucks.
"If white folks would not have been removed from the Starbucks by the cops, then the black folks are right to complain. "
It's only a matter of time before a couple of white guys in MAGA hats and NASCAR jackets test this hypothesis.
Observing fact does not make racist.
I lost interest when NR fired Derb over his article, which very true.
It did get me reading Taki'smagaine, though.
I do live in a fantasy world. It's called Portland, Oregon.
In the dictionary, lynching comes after loitering.
It's interesting to me that people will fight the idea that racism can possibly exist, anywhere at anytime. You don't have to admit that every social ill is caused by structural racism to admit that one decision by one employee was probably motivated by racism. Get a grip. You're defending an action that's on video and the company's own CEO says was a mistake. This isn't that big of a deal. It's the blip in the news cycle.
Also, kiss off.
"White people really do move away from black people."
Where does does Obama live, John Lynch?
It's a DC neighborhood called "Kalorama."
Looks like Obama has moved away from Black people.
Really, John Lynch, you seem to to start your reasoning process with the idea that the purpose of reason is to call people racist.
So this guy was denied the opportunity to use the restroom then he refused to leave and was arrested.
Pro tip: If you can possibly avoid being arrested when you have to take a shit, do it.
Have you ever taken a shit in a jail cell?
Civil disobedience is all well and good, but don't be a damn fool. If America is truly a racist country, there will other opportunities.
Don't make a stand when you have to take a squat. I think that was one of Alinsky's rules.
It should be noted that the cops did not dash in and slap on the cuffs. They politely asked the men to wait for their friend outside. The men refused the polite and appropriate request of the officers. What variety of moron does that? What variety of idiot declines to honor the polite request of a cop?
John Lynch said...
It's interesting to me that people will fight the idea that racism can possibly exist, anywhere at anytime.
Has anyone here done that? If so, please quote.
You don't have to admit that every social ill is caused by structural racism to admit that one decision by one employee was probably motivated by racism.
It's always a bad idea to try to calculate probabilities based on a single data point, which is all we have about this employee, or this Starbucks. And we only have very sparse data about overall incidents of how businesses handle customer-only bathroom access.
Get a grip. You're defending an action that's on video and the company's own CEO says was a mistake.
The arrest is on video. The racism ( if there was racism ) is not. The racism ( if there was racism ) took place inside the employee's head, when they made the decision to ask the people to leave. Since we don't know how they treated other non-customers, we do not know if there was racism.
The company's own CEO says it was a mistake. That does not tell us if the decision was based on racism.
Most of the Starbucks in the South do not have locked restrooms. I have been in lots in Ga., Ala., Tenn and Fl and don't recall having to ask for a key. I think the locks are generally in Starbucks in shithole cities.
I live in Jupiter, FL, a rather well-to-do community. I frequent Starbucks here (there are two in town) because my boss likes to meet with me there. We always buy something. Neither Starbucks have locks on their bathrooms. (Jupiter has always had a small black population -- in single digits percentage-wise. Today it is under 2%, actually lower than Asians. In the recent decades - perhaps two -- Hispanics - mostly Guatemalans -- have settled in the lower middle class part of town to serve the needs of landscapers and such to the tune of almost 13%. I have never seen an Hispanic person in the local Starbucks. Perhaps I missed them. Blacks, once in a while. Usually upscale whites) But when I was in downtown West Palm Beach on business, I needed to use the restroom so I stopped in at the Starbucks there. Their restroom had a sign regarding customers only and you needed a code to get in. So I went and ordered a drink and asked for the code. Not a problem. The WPB location could be described as inner-city but really more of a downtown. Some homeless. WPB proper has about 33% black and 23% Hispanic. Is there a correlation? I have no idea.
While I subscribe to the "restrooms ought to be available to the general public", as someone who has owned their own business catering to the public and as a restaurant manager, I can see how some person tying up the restroom (for wash-ups or drug use) to the detriment of a paying customer would piss me off. It makes me look at that particular issue from a different viewpoint.
@rhhardin - "Today's problem is Bayes' Theorem. It makes good sense to suspect blacks are more likely to cause trouble, in the absence of individual information to the contrary."
Ur race-baiter Rev. Jesse Jackson agrees, see paragraph 8.
"In Chicago he said, "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.""
Most of the Starbucks in the South do not have locked restrooms. I have been in lots in Ga., Ala., Tenn and Fl and don't recall having to ask for a key. I think the locks are generally in Starbucks in shithole cities
AFAIK, all Starbucks in the West lock their restrooms. The South is more civilized in many respects.
It never occurred to me to go into Starbucks and sit there and NOT buy something.
Some other coffee shops USED to let people use the internet forever, but found people abused it, so now they limit you to 1 hour. Starbucks has no limits.
Anyway, Peete's coffee will do mucho business when Starbucks' closes down for "We're not Racist" day.
Usually bathrooms are only locked when you have people using it for more than going the toilet. I noticed our local libraries have solved that problem but getting rid of paper towels and redesigning so, you can't use the sink for more than washing your hands.
Surely somebody here has been in a Starbuck and used the bathroom. Did you have to ask for a key?
It's an urban thing. Here in suburbia -- no. In downtown DC or such -- yes.
Many of the Starbucks stores I've been in during the past few years do not even have restrooms open to the public. Signs on the front doors have said, "Restrooms for employees only." This has always seemed to me an odd policy for a place that sells coffee--and a highly inconvenient one when I am running around, looking for an "outlet" in an emergency. Thank Allah for MacDonald's, where restrooms are invariably "free fire zones." (Which may account for them being hang-outs for the underclass and the urban lumpenproletariat, at least where I live. Idlers and loiterers seemingly have the run of the place without making purchases.)
The best thing I have seen on the Starbucks dust-up was on the Ace of Spades blog, wherein Ace does a point-by-point breakdown of what happened, and it's implications. His analysis was so comprehensive and cogent that Instapundit linked to it with the suggestion, "Read the whole thing." I'd link to it myself, here and now, except that I've never mastered how to link to stuff on this blog.
Blogger Ron Winkleheimer said...
Surely somebody here has been in a Starbuck and used the bathroom. Did you have to ask for a key?
The answer is yes and no...depends on the location. Just like gas stations.
I've been in Starbucks restrooms with key pad locks and found a needle, lighter and little fool packets. Fun
...foil...not fool...though the person who left them surly was.
So, it develops that the two black gentlemen were not arrested for arguing with the store personnel, but for doubling down on stupid and arguing with and disobeying the cops.
"What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings..."
[Sesame Street fans sing it with me] One of these things is not like the other...
Part 2:
"It's interesting to me that people will fight the idea that racism can possibly exist..."
"What the Starbucks incident has in common with the lynchings..."
[One more time!] One of these things is not like the other....
There is no fucking mystery to this and no racism. Anybody not pretending to live in Selma circa 1963 understands this. The bathrooms in the South are generally not locked because we treat everybody the same except for reeking bums who want to use our restrooms to shower.
William Chadwick at 10:24 AM
The best thing I have seen on the Starbucks dust-up was on the Ace of Spades blog .... I'd link to it myself, here and now, except that I've never mastered how to link to stuff on this blog.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=374847
I do live in a fantasy world. It's called Portland, Oregon.
I hear Eugene is even worse.
This incident makes me recall a story a few years back of a black father waiting for his kids in the mall and the manager of the store he was sitting in front of, called the police who ended up tasing him.
Man arrested while people up his kids.
“I'd link to it myself, here and now, except that I've never mastered how to link to stuff on this blog.”
Sheesh, it’s not that difficult.
“Thank Allah for MacDonald's, where restrooms are invariably "free fire zones." (Which may account for them being hang-outs for the underclass and the urban lumpenproletariat, at least where I live. Idlers and loiterers seemingly have the run of the place without making purchases.)”
Yeh - my partner tells everyone that I am just like the vagrants that frequent the McDonalds by the house in AZ. I buy a cup in the morning, and hang around there intermittently throughout the day. Many days, the cups are worn out by the end of the day, but even if they aren’t, I still buy a new one the next day, or at least try to (the young Hispanic girl who works the front on weekends tends to charge me for my partner’s coffee, but not for my soft drink cup). The homeless are pretty obvious, but do buy stuff there, presumably with the money they have panhandled on the on ramps to the nearby freeway.
BTW - I hate Starbucks. Don’t drink coffee anymore, but have been assured by coffee drinkers (like my partner) that their coffee is horrid. Great, if you load it up with 2,000 calories of fu fu sweet stuff, but not so if you drink it close to black. Their ice tea is Artisan quality, meaning almost undrinkable. And grossly overpriced - $3-$4 for a tiny cup that doesn’t taste nearly as good as I get at McDonalds, for $1 a cup for all that I can drink a day. I don’t need pretentious, which is what they sell.
Yes, Inga, I see that you know how to do that. Probably you were studying computers while obviously ignoring history, economics and basic logic. I know how to post links at other blogs but this one seemingly has a special procedure I haven't cracked yet. Maybe you could instruct me how. In return I'll try to overlook your general stupidity. Deal?
Mike Sylvester provides a semi-link to the Ace piece, but it's not "clicky." Maybe Inga can instruct him, too.
The arrested men now claim they feared for their lives. This little narrative tip alerts me to the probability that this was staged. that they feared for their lives is certainly a lie meant to milk these last moments of fame. And to monetize them.
The places where you have to ask for a key to the restroom are places with lots of homeless people.
Mike, here is a visual {a href="URL"}link word or phrase{/a}. The only change is the brackets where I used { and } have to be < and >.
I see this happening with Seattle Times articles all the time. A recent article outlined how many more AA men were cited for jaywalking in downtown Seattle. All comments were along the lines of "Yeah, I see this daily, angry black men crossing in front of moving bus in the middle of the block glaring at the driver daring to hit him - what is up with that?" Anything regarding proper, PC thinking gets pushback. More and more, ST doesn't even allow comments, especially on articles related to women and minorities.
The Stranger (Seattle alt publication) is even worse. I read the comments at The Stranger when I need a lift (no shit), 85% of them are doing an exellent take down of the paper's lefty idealism.
Inga said...
This incident makes me recall a story a few years back of a black father waiting for his kids in the mall and the manager of the store he was sitting in front of, called the police who ended up tasing him.
What your link fails to mention is that when the security guard told him to leave, he refused. At that point he was trespassing. That is a crime. As such, when the police got there, they had every right to require him to produce id. When he refused, they had every right to arrest him, and use whatever amount of force was needed to do so.
"AFAIK, all Starbucks in the West lock their restrooms."
Speaking from my west coast experience, Starbucks in big city downtowns tend to have locked bathrooms.
Starbucks on the outskirts of a city (more single home residential neighborhoods), in suburbs, or more rural towns rarely do. I'd say 'never" do, but I'm sure there are exceptions.
I'm an infrequent Starbucks customer, but with wide diversity of locations.
What your link fails to mention is that when the security guard told him to leave, he refused
The unmentionable elephant in the middle of the room is the fact that 90% of Black people's problems with the police and authorities is due to their refusal to cooperate.
Re the Ace of Spades article, at one point Ace expresses consternation at how some people do not understand the basic commonsense public behavior. I am sort of used to it by now. In almost every public library in this city, you'll find people talking (often loudly) on cell phones or sitting at computers watching rap videos without earphones, or with the volume turned up so loudly the earphones aren't helping much. And then there are the lazy parents letting their noisy brats run amok. Rare are the librarians with the testicularity to enforce the rules; and in many cases I don't blame them. They're probably not getting combat pay to go up against crazy bums.
Re the jaywalking thing, that seems almost exclusively like a lower-class African-American phenomenon in this Sun Belt city. I'm not talking about scurrying across a street without waiting for the Don't Walk sign to change. I mean walking deliberately into a busy thoroughfare and not even trying to dodge the traffic. It's like taking the attitude, "You don't tell me when to cross the street, honky." I observed this so many times I figured it must be some cultural phenomenon (another Black thing I wouldn't understand), so being a curious guy I did an internet search on "jaywalking Blacks." And sure enough I got links to stories like the one referenced in a post above: where the "community" claimed Blacks were being unfairly ticketed for jaywalking in higher proportion than Whites; while authorities maintained there was a higher proportion of Black jaywalkers. (Which has been my experience in this city.)
Cafes encourage loitering while or in proximity to consuming. They are not for-profit non-profit businesses that offer a virtue product or service. This is not about diversity, other than an attempted Occupation by [color] diversitists.
It's always a good day when I learn something new. Today it's the phrase "ghetto lottery." On a whim I did a search on the jaywalking Blacks phenomenon, and one article referenced the "ghetto lottery." There are several definitions, but in this context it would refer to a ghetto dweller stepping into traffic and either getting hit non-fatally or faking it, then getting some "community activist" lawyer to sue the motorist, often claiming racism. I wonder if the Starbucks guys were playing some version of Ghetto Lottery. Maybe they can at least do a Kramer and get free Lattes for life.
:eyeroll:
I'm so tired of all the whining.
BTW - I hate Starbucks. Don’t drink coffee anymore, but have been assured by coffee drinkers (like my partner) that their coffee is horrid.
They burn the coffee beans when they roast them.
Maybe nobody engaged the idea that lynching is morally equivalent to making a non-customer leave a restaurant because said idea is deranged?
Martin said...
Maybe nobody engaged the idea... because said idea is deranged?
This is the internet. When has that ever stopped anybody?
William Chadwick
The jaywalking while black is a thing here in Atlanta. Strange. And blacks seem not to know the significance of the red hand versus the image of the walker on the crosswalks. Also strange.
WRT Ms. Attiah's column, I kind of have a problem with a second generation American, the child of two Africans who's attended elite schools and works at quite a young age for an elite publication lecturing me about America's problems and how awful Americans are. How the heck would she know? What the heck does she even know about the problems of ordinary black folk here in the U. S.? She doesn't possess some sort of secret knowledge simply by virtue of the color of her skin.
This isn't that big of a deal. It's the blip in the news cycle.
It isn't a big deal. It shouldn't have even made the news once, let alone days on end.
If this is what counts as racism in America today, we are truly pissing and moaning about first world problems.
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