Not Just About Coffee

As I write this 8,000 Starbucks across the nation are closed for a special training program for their employees about implicit/unconscious bias.  It all grows out of an incident in Philadelphia last month, when two African-American men were arrested on counts of trespassing for no apparent reason other than someone at the store felt threatened by their skin color.

I applaud Starbucks for this action.  No doubt they will lose a fair amount of income over the course of this day.  But they have taken a very bad bit of publicity and turned it into a good.  That said, I hope no one thinks that a four-hour in-service training program will eliminate the problem.  Racism is so entrenched in our culture, despite the real legal progress that we have made, that it will take much more than this to lift it from our backs.

But we must do what we can.  And certainly this is one thing that Starbucks can do, and has done.  Now, what are the next steps?  What are the next steps for Starbucks?  And how will others follow their lead?  How will we as a society come to grips with what one author called "America's original sin'?  I don't know all the answers here--but I do know even talking about it is an important step.  But it can't be the only step.  The theological word that comes to mind is metanoia.  That's the Greek word used in the New Testament for repentance.  Literally it means to "turn around and head in a new direction."  Starbucks seems to have turned around--but now they, and we, need to keep walking in the new direction.