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Starbucks to close all stores on May 29 for racial bias education

The announcement comes after the controversial arrests of two black men at a Starbucks store in Philadelphia.
Credit: Mark Makela/Getty Images
Protestors demonstrate outside a Center City Starbucks on April 15, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia Police arrested two black men in the same Center City Starbucks, which prompted an apology from the company's CEO.

In the midst of calls to boycott Starbucks following the controversial arrest of two black men at a store in Philadelphia, the company said Tuesday all locations will close their doors for a day next month for mandatory racial bias training.

The announcement comes on the same day Starbucks said its CEO Kevin Johnson met with the two men, whose names have not been released. Johnson also issued an apology letter and video.

More than 8,000 company-owned stores will close for the afternoon on May 29. Nearly 175,000 employees will undergo a training program developed by "national and local experts," according to an online announcement on the company's website. The training will also be included in the onboarding process for future employees.

The experts will include Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Heather McGhee, president of Demos; former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; and Jonathan Greenblatt, ceo of the Anti-Defamation League, Starbucks said.

The training materials will also be made available to other companies.

“I’ve spent the last few days in Philadelphia with my leadership team listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it,” Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said in the statement.

“While this is not limited to Starbucks, we’re committed to being a part of the solution. Closing our stores for racial bias training is just one step in a journey that requires dedication from every level of our company and partnerships in our local communities.”

However, Ijeoma Oluo, a Shoreline write and speaker on racial bias, said she was skeptical how effective the training would be.

“The thing about racial bias is, it's something for the entirety of your life is implanted in you," Oluo said. "From the films we see, the books you read, everything we're told from our parents. What we're not told. These things, that's a whole lifetime. And a half a day of training will not root that out.”

Oluo said Starbucks and other companies should strive to include people of color in their customer base to solve the problem.

“It is important for companies to realize that the reason these things happen is because they don't write people of color and racial equity into their profit models,” she said.

Starbucks faced backlash after a video showing officers arresting two black men who asked to use the bathroom while waiting for a friend at a Philadelphia area store went viral.

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