Here's the Starbucks racial bias training video employees saw

[Bobo]

@cahutchins

I get the cynicism, but this is part of a much bigger, broader awakening in our culture right now. Starbucks didn’t offer implicit bias training in the past, because almost nobody offered implicit bias training.

As do I, but most large companies do indeed have sensitivity/bias training as a part of their employee training. I work for a fortune 100 company, and have to sit through poorly made videos and do quizzes etc… every year. They’re not as well funded as this one, but we’re also not in the national media spotlight for super racist customer interactions…

@cahutchins

The biases and unconscious racism that many people display every day simply wasn’t recognized by the dominant culture for the last fifty-odd years. You can’t blame one coffee corporation for that.

Please don’t put words into my mouth that I didn’t say. I am in no way blaming a single coffee corporation for being the cause of the lack of recognition of unconscious racism. What I am going to get on most companies for is not being proactive rather than reactive.

@cahutchins

The difference is that now we’re becoming more and more aware of these issues — and more and more able to record and publicize them when they happen. I applaud any organization that is waking up to this problem and trying to deal with it constructively.

As do I. I just wish there were companies recognizing the degree of the problem, and handling this in a preventative/proactive fashion rather than a reactive fashion, rather than only taking these steps when they’re in the international media spotlight, and their balls are in a vice so to say. It’s one thing to do it when you spontaneously awake (or are informed internally of the problem). It’s another thing entirely to do it as a response to a horrible incident and pending litigation. That’s pretty much my only point.

Heck my company at least tries at this, but the budget/quality of material is nowhere near the what Starbucks spent on this. Our revenues last year were almost three times what Starbucks pulled in. We could be doing something of this quality (but aren’t…)