Public outrage over the arrest of two African-American men at a Philadelphia Starbucks prompted a corporate crisis that led the company to take the unprecedented step of closing more than 8,000 stores for an afternoon in May to train baristas on how to recognize their racial biases. The scene of two black men in handcuffs being led out of the coffee shop by police delivered an uncomfortable reminder of the country’s racial disparities, the Washington Post reports. The incident illustrates a pervasive bias that can affect even the most mundane activities in U.S. public spaces. The two men were waiting for a business associate when the manager called the police.
Nowhere else in Philadelphia are African Americans more disproportionately stopped by police than in the neighborhood surrounding the Starbucks, two blocks from ritzy Rittenhouse Square, where luxury apartment rents can run $10,000 a month. While African Americans make up three percent of the area’s residents, they account for 67 percent of pedestrian police stops, found a 2017 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has monitored racial disparity in Philadelphia policing for eight years. Businesses in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown area operated a private messaging app that allowed retailers to alert police officers about people they considered suspicious. Most suspicions in the wealthy, predominantly white community were about blacks. The service was suspended in 2015 amid concerns about racial profiling. “It raises all kinds of questions. How long can you be on a property? Can you not browse at these stores now? Who gets to determine whether you’re acting as a patron or as a trespasser?” asked the ACLU’s Jason Williamson.