#RaceTogether and the Harm of Racial Ignorance [View all]

[sheshe2]

Many questions immediately spring to mind: What civil rights groups, anti-racist organizations or diversity experts did Starbucks consult in crafting #RaceTogether? Why is Starbucks' leadership team lacking in gender and racial diversity? One can easily imagine that both white and non-white people might feel racially profiled when receiving a cup with the dreaded hashtag. Did the company provide employees with guidelines for how to select customers to "join" in the conversation? There is also the issue of consent. What about those of us who have no desire to be asked about a painful topic by a perfect stranger? Are people of color now going to have to wear t-shirts to Starbucks that say: "Please don't ask me about race and don't touch my hair"? What happens when conflict arises, as it inevitably will in any public discussion of race? Will Starbucks provide therapy for employees and customers who feel traumatized by the racist ideas they are sure to hear in their stores? On social media, the #RaceTogether hashtag has already been hijacked by racists. What does Starbucks have to say about that?

When asked on Twitter whether Starbucks employees received diversity training before being asked to start conversations about race with customers, the company replied: "We don't presume to educate communities on race, only to encourage an open dialogue." The trouble with this, however, is that it is socially irresponsible for a company to subject employees and customers to no-holds barred discussions of race. While Starbucks suggests that "talking about race" is "worth a little discomfort", the company has a responsibility to consider what it can and should do to take into account the perspectives of people who actually have to deal with racism and don't have the option of treating it as an optional topic of discourse in the coffee line.

One of the reasons why it is so difficult to have public conversations about race is the fact that very few people have actually studied race seriously, either on their own or within an educational setting. Starbucks is actually contributing to the misconception that "race" is something that doesn't require education to discuss. The truth is that many people have never taken a class on the subject, attended an anti-racist workshop or even read a book about the history of racism. Conversations based on racial ignorance are actually quite harmful and have the potential to alienate people who have experienced racism or lost loved ones to racial violence. As an anti-racist educator, occasional coffee drinker and woman of color, I do not want to hear random members of the public who have not studied race share their uninformed opinions with or around me in the early morning hours.

Research on racial attitudes has demonstrated that there are wide swaths of the majority population who believe that talking about race at all is racist, that critiquing white people individually or collectively is inherently hateful and that racism is over (if it ever existed in the first place). Such ideas minimize or outright deny the existence of racial inequality and white supremacy in our society today. As philosopher Charles Mills explains, these forms of denial produce an "epistemology of ignorance"--a way of knowing and constructing the world built on a lack of knowledge about the social and political realities of race.

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