Free Republic

In Dealing with Racism and Anti-Semitism, Coffee Cups Can't Replace Action. It didn't take a genius to predict that the idea of promoting discussion about race between baristas at Starbucks and their customers would come to a rapid and certain end. However well intended, the concept of entering a coffeehouse and having a protracted conversation about race while holding up lines and diverting customers from their usual routine just sounded juvenile. Credit Starbucks leaders for good intentions and even better sense in halting the program abruptly. Consider two men who are more about action when it comes to race relations...

The CEO of Starbucks, who was scorned for his recent effort to spark a national conversation on race, is planning to meet with the family of Dontre Hamilton, the African-American man killed by a Milwaukee police officer last year after Starbucks employees called to report him sleeping in Red Arrow Park, according to Hamilton's brother and others close to the family. Nate Hamilton said Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is scheduled to meet with the family on April 1 in Milwaukee. Efforts to reach the Seattle-based company Tuesday and Wednesday to confirm the visit were not successful.

Nothing was solved. Since Starbucks launched its “Race Together” initiative — encouraging customers to have conversations about racial issues with its employees — there have been a slew of Internet think pieces about what’s right or wrong about it. Some people said it was an awkward and a dumb idea. Other people said those people were racists. So — I decided to go out and see for myself what it would be like if I actually did what Starbucks was telling its customers to do. On Friday, I spent the entire day visiting Starbucks locations all around New York City,...

At the Starbucks annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday, CEO Howard Schultz sent a clear message to anyone who supports traditional marriage over gay marriage: we don't want your business. After saying Starbucks wants to "embrace diversity of all kinds," he told a shareholder who supports traditional marriage that he should sell his shares and invest in some other company. According to a report by Forbes, Schultz seemed a bit intolerant of any Starbucks shareholders who opposed gay marriage for moral or religious reasons. During the meeting, shareholder Tom Strobhar (who founded the Corporate Morality Action Center) pointed out that after...

Espresso makes you hyper. When you’re hyper you sometimes make rash decisions. When you make rash decisions you usually regret it. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz evidently chugged a Venti-five-shot-double-pump-skinny-vanilla-latte last week before announcing Starbucks’ new “RaceTogether” public relations stunt. As he describes it, the über-”progressive” head of the multi-billion dollar corporate mega-giant that brews mediocre coffee by the silo full and whose leadership is almost exclusively white – hopes to “start a discussion” about American race relations. (I’m pretty sure that discussion has been ongoing for a couple centuries, but, hey, I was wrong that one time about that other...

On Melissa Harris-Perry's show this weekend, the host resoundingly approved when a guy who said that his mission in life is to "get white people to talk about whiteness" suggested that baristas at Starbucks should write “White supremacy has been the organizing principle of America since it was founded” on customers' coffee cups. - See more at:

Good Morning! If you, like most non-super heroes, need a cuppa joe to get rolling – there’s good news! You can once again grab a cup at Starbucks without having your white privilege challenged by the barista with a dual degree in philosophy and gender studies. The coffee chain has dropped their “Race for the Cure” campaign, due to extreme blowback; in other words, it was effecting the bottom line.According to the Instapundit, part of the problem may have been the hypocrisy: STARBUCKS: Where Only The Coffee Is Black! It’s not shocking at all that this lame “conversation about race”...

Would you like a lecture on race with your latte? That may sound like the name of a breakout session at a “White Privilege” conference or a new class at an Ivy League university, but it’s the new corporate policy at Starbucks. You now can be lectured by an otherwise unemployable gender studies graduate while paying $7 for a a penny’s worth of hot water run over a nickel’s worth of ground coffee beans and a splash of milk. What took Madison Avenue so long to cook up this marketing scheme? I don’t drink coffee, never have. I’ve only been...

According to a recently released internal memo, Starbucks baristas will no longer write "Race Together" on customers' cups starting Sunday. Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson says the campaign to create discussion on diversity and racial inequality will continue without the handwritten messages, which are phasing out as originally planned.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Congratulations, Internet haters! Well done, keepers of the one-true-way-to-talk-about-race! If we don't tamp down the backlash against Starbucks "Race Together" campaign, I fear that no major corporation will even try to talk about race again -- for maybe 10 or 20 years. Is that really what we want? Look, I get it. Asking baristas to hold conversations about race is a lot to demand of already hard-working employees. Not to mention, the topic should probably be called "systematic racism," not just "race." And there are legitimate questions about what Starbucks could realistically hope to accomplish, here. But for crying...

Starbucks Coffee is getting creamed by New York City rents. The java giant may get priced out of its premier and larger Manhattan locations as some of the company’s earliest stores approach renewal after 15 to 20 years. “It’s likely that it’ll be very difficult to renew a number of those leases,” said retail broker Joanne Podell, a vice chairman at Cushman & Wakefield, who does not represent Starbucks. She noted that the stores with “superb” locations—i.e., on busy streets with well-trafficked storefronts—are expiring and the chain was paying “much, much less per square foot” than today’s rents. The average...

Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, wants his employees to talk to the customers about race relations in America, which makes as much sense, I suppose, as a bank instructing its tellers to inquire after your faith. In other words, Schultz and his people have gotten so full of themselves that they actually believe a barista can engage a customer in a meaningful conversation about race, even though the customer might want only a latte and not chatter. Or else they believe that coffee, by virtue of its stimulants, is an elixir that can close the great divide, if there...

Somebody needs to tell Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz to snap a lid on his grande mocha-hole, especially seeing as he chooses not to match his money or his actions to that frothing hypocrite mouth. In case you haven’t heard about it already, as part of the all-out propaganda war of disinformation being waged (and, massively funded by at least $33 million from his fellow lefty opportunist billionaire and tribal kinsman, Gyorgy Schwartz aka George Soros) under the hashtag “BlackLivesMatter,” Starbucks’ Schultz is urging his legions of baristas to write “#RaceTogether” on customers’ coffee cups, as a way to provoke in-store...

Starbucks is hoping to lead a national conversation about race. According to a video released by founder Howard Schultz, Starbucks baristas are encouraged to scrawl "race together" on coffee cups before placing them in the hands of customers. This hollow bit of moral exhibitionism is supposed to encourage "compassion," "honesty," "empathy" and "love." Does Starbucks sell caffeine-free compassion? Each and every time we're hectored to engage in an "honest conversation" about race, it's a sham. What's wanted is not honesty, but confession of sin by white people and expressions of pain from blacks and others. Decade after decade, despite vastly...

Starbucks executive Corey duBrowa recently deleted his twitter account, after what he said were abusive comments as a result of his push for a campaign in which his baristas were to engage with customers about race relations. "I was personally attacked through my Twitter account around midnight last night and the tweets represented a distraction from the respectful conversation we are trying to start around Race Together," duBrowa said. "I’ll be back on Twitter soon." But the whole point of the conversations he promoted, was to get people talking about what is uncomfortable, and controversial. It seems childish to delete...

This week we see the roll out of a new campaign from Starbucks, where the 'barrista' aka Waiter is supposed to kick start a 'casual conversation with the customer' about race relations in the U.S.. Two days in, and the majority of people are either laughing and mocking or scowling and condemning. I don't expect the Racetalks to still be going on by Memorial Day, late May. Only if they start writing up rules, conditions and solid incentives (aka $) for both the waiters and the customers. Before Starbucks new strategy, there was another Mad Hatter type of social experiment...

Starbucks just announced a new campaign inviting their customers to discuss race relations with baristas. The Seattle-based coffee company is asking employees to write “Race Together” on the side of customers’ cups, in an effort to engage them to discuss…well, their ethnicity. The campaign was sparked by the recent uptick in nationally-covered racially-charged tragedies, according to a Starbucks press release. “What if we were to write ‘Race Together’ on every Starbucks cup, and that facilitated a conversation between you and our customers?” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz says in a video message to partners. “And what if our customers as a...

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s bold decision to encourage his baristas to discuss race relations with willing customers has filled me with shock and awe. I’m in awe of his courageous and good-hearted attempt to do something to bring about better awareness of racism. I’m in awe that he’s willing to put morality above profits. I’m in awe that he’s willing to endure the snarky ridicule and lame coffee jokes from pundits as well as the inevitable death threats from clueless trolls. All with nothing personally or corporately to gain — and a lot to lose.

For the most part, large, publicly traded companies shy away from emotionally charged social issues, recognizing it is safest to take a neutral stance. But this week Starbucks has stepped out onto a ledge with its newest public campaign, which may be its riskiest yet. Starbucks is tackling race relations in the country. The company is not thinking small. Starbucks took out a full-page ad in the New York Times Sunday that reads "Shall we overcome?" in the center with "Race Together" at the bottom of the page. The ad may have cost more than $200,000. While this is not...