Footage of two black men handcuffed in Starbucks prompts police investigation

[Perknose]

We have two opposing narratives being presented in this thread.

First narrative: It's obvious that the manager engaged in racial profiling based on their looks / color and got the police involved almost immediately.

Second narrative: Starbucks is a business and it has the right to ask non-paying customers to leave. If the two young men had been planning this meeting for several months and it was such an important meeting about investing in real estate then the men could have simply bought a $2 coffee, used the restroom and sat down at a table and waited a few minute for the other person to arrive. Why blow the meeting for a $2 cup of coffee. When the police arrived and told them to leave they resisted and after asking two more times, they were arrested. They would not have been arrested if they complied with the police officers request the first time and left the premises. They could have waited outside to meet the other person and gone someplace else to meet.

What the second narrative is missing is what I left in your first narrative, and how this impacted the decision of those two men, who knew this was racism just as surely as you do, to finally take a stand. They were weary of this kind of brutally unfair, casual racism, based entirely and selectively on the color of their skin, that they and most everyone else in their community had endured their entire f*cking live. It was entirely a principled NON-VIOLENT act of protest.

You know who else did the same damn thing, with the same arrest result, because, prima facie the LAW (Starbucks as a business has the right to ask anyone to leave), as it is in this case?

Rosa Parks.

She too, was simply tired of a society with different rules for a different color. In her case it was de jure racism (Jim Crow laws); in this case, it's de facto racism (by the barrista, supported or just "understood" by far too many here). The long, hard slog towards a truly non-racist society is far from over.

Who can't understand this? I'll tell you who:

The unconscious racists here, who angrily bleat 'till they're blue in the face that they are NOT racists, like the one who weighed in that these BOYS should just have left. Yet another licksplitter of the angry and ignorant right, with a racist Muslim jab as his username, came right in behind to jump up and down and attack me, the irony of what he said at both the beginning and the end of his post somehow eluding him.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Why did the manager call 911 after two minutes?

 

[ch33zw1z]

Why did the manager call 911 after two minutes?

Because black people were in the store.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Because black people were in the store.

Which again, if something sounds too absurd to be true it probably is. The manager saw two black guys in a store and said oh shit I better call 911 just for the hell of it? Makes no sense.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Which again, if something sounds too absurd to be true it probably is. The manager saw two black guys in a store and said oh shit I better call 911 just for the hell of it? Makes no sense.

Racism isn't based on reality, facts, or reason.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Because black people were in the store.

Dr. John says it best.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Dr. John says it best.

Good jam. Lock him up

 

[ivwshane]

Why did the manager call 911 after two minutes?

How about you come up with a reason that you think a reasonable response would be is to call the cops. Then ask yourself if that is something that no one else would have leaked to the press or that no one else would have talked about.

 

[Perknose]

Has there been interviews with witnesses, managers, police, etc? I have no idea, haven’t read through 15 pages.

The (white, btw) witnesses were uniformly horrified at what happened. Here, take one minute and 21 seconds and listen to Melissa DePino, a witness describe her reaction and the reactions of other witnesses.

Didn't you even listen to the original video? From it's soundtrack:

Other people in the cafe at the time can be heard protesting that the men “didn’t do anything” and “were just sitting there” before they were arrested.

Here's another witnesses' account:

One witness, identified as Lauren, talked to Philadelphia’s WPVI and said the Starbucks manager never asked the men to leave before calling police. Other witnesses present when the incident took place Thursday said at least one of the two men asked for the bathroom code and were denied because they didn’t make a purchase.

“Lauren said another woman had entered the Starbucks minutes before the men were arrested and was given the bathroom code without having to buy anything and that another person in the restaurant at the time of the incident ‘announced that she had been sitting at Starbucks for the past couple of hours without buying anything,’” WPVI’s Danny Clemens reported.

I know it's hard for you to credit this level of blatant racism in 2018, just as it was hard for me to believe what I was hearing when khaki clad "good people on both sides" were clutching their Tiki torches and screaming, over and over and over again, "Jews won't replace us."

Post racial society, my ass!

 

[UglyCasanova]

How about you come up with a reason that you think a reasonable response would be is to call the cops. Then ask yourself if that is something that no one else would have leaked to the press or that no one else would have talked about.

Unless they were causing a disturbance I don’t see a reason why the cops should have been called. Doesn’t sound like they were. But I also don’t buy the idea that someone saw black people so immediately called 911 just for the hell of it. Makes zero sense, even if they are racist.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Unless they were causing a disturbance I don’t see a reason why the cops should have been called. Doesn’t sound like they were. But I also don’t buy the idea that someone saw black people so immediately called 911 just for the hell of it. Makes zero sense, even if they are racist.

Confirmation bias is hard to overcome.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Has there been interviews with witnesses, managers, police, etc? I have no idea, haven’t read through 15 pages.

And you apparently haven't bothered to read any of the *many* articles on the incident either.

 

[Brainonska511]

And you apparently haven't bothered to read any of the *many* articles on the incident either.

He would rather just JAQ off

 

[Victorian Gray]

There’s a missing piece to the story.i just don’t buy it that the manager called 911 because they hadn’t bought something in two minutes. Racist or not. Something else happened. No clue what and I doubt we’ll ever hear.

That's so cute. Look at you all wrapped up in your little blankie of concern.

 

[UNCjigga]

Not that it matters (racism is racism), but I wonder if some of the people defending the manager's actions here would feel the same if they knew the manager was South Asian and not white. Is it easier to be defensive about racism, when the person accused of being a racist is white?

I always found the opposite to be true for me. I'm South Asian, and typically when I hear of South Asians being accused of racism, I assume they were actually racist. Pretty much every single South Asian of my parents' generation (including my parents) harbored racist attitudes towards blacks, Muslims and Chinese. Some I sympathize with (assets seized and kicked out of Uganda by Idi Amin; or kicked out of Punjab by Muslims during partition) but mostly it's just ethic tribalism on display.

 

[brycejones]

Unless they were causing a disturbance I don’t see a reason why the cops should have been called. Doesn’t sound like they were. But I also don’t buy the idea that someone saw black people so immediately called 911 just for the hell of it. Makes zero sense, even if they are racist.

So it must be a conspiracy.......

 

[UglyCasanova]

I never said it was a conspiracy

 

[brycejones]

I never said it was a conspiracy

Yes you did, since you said something else must have happened but we aren't being told about it.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Yes you did, since you said something else must have happened but we aren't being told about it.

I think something else did happen, I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to keep it hushed though. No manager calls the cops after two mins just because black people. No idea wtf happened there that day but an overly simplistic narrative of we walked in and were black so they called the cops just doesn’t seem realistic.

 

[Victorian Gray]

I think something else did happen, I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to keep it hushed though. No manager calls the cops after two mins just because black people. No idea wtf happened there that day but an overly simplistic narrative of we walked in and were black so they called the cops just doesn’t seem realistic.

You keep fighting the good fight against a claim that nobody has made. Power to the people!

 

[UglyCasanova]

Claim that nobody has made..

Why did the manager call 911 after two minutes?

Because black people were in the store.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Claim that nobody has made..

Oh pardon me, it's because they didn't order anything within 2 minutes because they're waiting for someone. Of course.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Claim that nobody has made..

You dropped something

 

[ivwshane]

I think something else did happen, I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to keep it hushed though. No manager calls the cops after two mins just because black people. No idea wtf happened there that day but an overly simplistic narrative of we walked in and were black so they called the cops just doesn’t seem realistic.

It doesn't? Where do you live? How often do you encounter different black people in your normal day? How many times have you seen overt racism directly in front of you?

I ask because, if you are like me, once you've seen racism firsthand, you start noticing it a lot more and not just the obvious racism like the random hail Hitler yelling at random strangers, but the kind that happened at this Starbucks. You then start noticing your own unconscious biases.

Clearly you haven't had that experience though because this wouldn't be such a ridiculous notion to you.

 

[brycejones]

I think something else did happen, I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to keep it hushed though. No manager calls the cops after two mins just because black people. No idea wtf happened there that day but an overly simplistic narrative of we walked in and were black so they called the cops just doesn’t seem realistic.

Lordy