In April, a Starbucks store manager called the cops on two black men who attempted to use the store restroom but had not purchased anything. They claimed they were waiting to meet with a real estate investor.
Black Lives Matters got involved, the store manager was stripped of title and rank, either voluntarily or otherwise, and Starbucks went into Virtue Signal DEFCON 1.
Part of their very public fix was the promise to close thousands of retail stores nationwide for sensitivity training. Last week, they did just that, closing their stores to retrain retail staff.
Their training workbook is exactly what you would expect, pure social justice drivel.
From the “your truth” nonsense—despite what current cultural trends accept, truth is not relative nor subjective, it is absolute (logic, religion, and mathematics teach us that much) to “institutional racism”, “othering”, and other similar garbage, the training (workbook embedded at the end of this post), is an unfortunate glimpse into progressive reality.
To be clear, many of these subjects are rooted in reality and worthy of reflection and discussion. Everyone has biases. True. Everyone has biases of which they’re probably not aware. Also true. But this training (like so much from the social justice world) singles out race or what Starbucks is calling “becoming color brave” and suggests (as social justice types do) that everyone harbors racist tendencies, they just haven’t spent enough time properly identifying them. Which is not true, regardless of what your personal truth tells you.
Plopped into the broader context of what’s increasingly referred to as the “broader culture”, Starbucks’ endeavor to rid the country of any kind of bias is just another two-bit shame game masquerading as progress.
See for yourself.
The training was conducted with accompanying videos which encourage partners (what Starbucks calls their employees) to deal with and address the emotional issues of their customers. Might be well-meaning, but in the absence of professional training, this is bound to be a disaster.
Full workbook here:
Starbucks Training Notebook by Legal Insurrection on Scribd
And Team Workbook here:
Starbucks Team Workbook by Legal Insurrection on Scribd
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