Leid Stories—Unconscious/Implicit Bias. Really?—05.30.18

Starbucks, the global coffee franchise, shut down its more than 8,000 stores across the country yesterday to provide a four-hour (voluntary) seminar for its employees on “unconscious bias” in the workplace. The company was praised for its forward-thinking action, the result of a Philadelphia store manager’s decision to call the cops on two African American men waiting at the store for a third person to have a meeting. They had not ordered anything while waiting (just a few minutes, the men said), and one of them asked to use the rest room and was denied. When the police arrived, the manager demanded the men be arrested and charged with trespassing. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson would later call the arrests “reprehensible,” and ordered the seminar.

Leid Stories listeners discussed yesterday the many reasons Johnson ordered companywide training. Today we tackle the issue of “unconscious or implicit bias.”