CoffeeHate
23rd April 2018 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
When I heard about the recent incident at a Philadelphia Starbucks during which two Black men were arrested and carted off to jail for attempting to use a restroom while waiting for a friend and refusing to leave when asked by a white employee to do so, the very first thing I thought about was Black nationalist leader Malcolm X’s remarks about how the only thing he liked integrated was his cup of coffee.
My second thought? Did this happen in the Philly where Will Smith and Boyz II Men hail from or in Philadelphia, Mississippi?
It just didn’t add up, unless you consider the fact that Malcolm X once said that “everything south of the Canadian border line is the South” and that the City of Brotherly Love has a long, sordid history of being anything but “brotherly” to the brothers and sisters who live there.
The Associated Press reported that the arrest of two Black men at Starbucks, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, sparked outrage, protests and calls for a boycott on social media. A video shows (five to six) police officers talking with the two men seated at a table. After a few minutes, the officers handcuff the men and lead them outside as other customers say they weren’t doing anything wrong. According to media reports, the two men, who are 23-year-old business partners, were waiting for a friend.
Philadelphia police released a recording of the call from the Starbucks employee that led to the arrests. In the recording, a woman is heard saying, “Hi, I have two gentlemen in my café that are refusing to make a purchase or leave.” She gives the address of the Starbucks store, and the entire call lasts less than 30 seconds. In the communications between police and dispatch that were also released, someone refers to “a group of males inside causing a disturbance,” and additional officers are sent.
“We were there for a real reason, a real deal that we were working on,” Robinson later explained to The Associated Press in an interview. “We put in a lot of time, energy, effort. … We were at a moment that could have a positive impact on a whole ladder of people, lives, families. So I was like, ‘No, you’re not stopping that right now.’”
Robinson said he thought about his loved ones and how the afternoon had taken such a turn as he was taken to jail. Nelson wondered if he’d make it home alive.
“Anytime I’m encountered by cops, I can honestly say it’s a thought that runs through my mind,” Nelson said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”
To their credit, the Philadelphia cops who arrested Robinson and Nelson managed to get them to the police station without them “shooting themselves while handcuffed in the back of the squad car” a la Victor White III in Louisiana, without taking them on a turbulent ride on rocky roads that ended in their deaths a la Freddie Gray of Baltimore or shooting them at pointblank range like a cop did Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge.
Making it to the police station in one piece is a definite plus, especially in a city that can lay claim to electing one of the most draconian district attorneys in U.S. history, to dropping explosives on a Black group called MOVE in 1985 and to having a police department and criminal justice system that framed former Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer.
We later learned that Nelson and Robinson, best friends since the fourth grade, were at the Starbucks café to discuss a real estate deal with Andrew Yaffe, a white businessman and friend.
Yaffe can reportedly be seen in video of the two men’s arrest demanding an explanation from the police.
Neither man resisted arrest.
To add insult to injury, Robinson had been a customer at that particular Starbucks since he was 15.
The Philly Starbucks incident explodes the myth about all of us living in a Post-racial America; a society where Black and Brown men and boys are no longer criminalized and vilified and treated like boogeymen by whites. A place where Black, Brown and poor people are not marginalized and are no longer punished or penalized because our very presence renders us Public Enemy No. 1. A society where it is safe for Black and Brown men to come in out of the cold and use a restroom even if we didn’t order a cup of coffee or a pastry. A society that sees and treats us as fully human and understands that we, like everyone else, are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Post-Racial America, with all of its Trump-isms, cop killings, economic injustice, educational apartheid, voter suppression and unequal justice, looks and feels an awful lot like Jim Crow America.
In the song “Harlem Blues,” featured in the Spike Lee film Mo’ Better Blues, W.C. Handy talked about there being places where “it’s sudden death to let somebody see you even stop to catch your breath.”
That has been the story of Black and Brown boys and men for as long as anyone can remember.
No rest or sleep. No time or space to breathe or even attempt to catch your breath.
It’s about staying one step ahead of white supremacy, paranoid Starbucks employees and trigger-happy cops who imagine you pulling out machetes and assault rifles.
Keep it moving and stay woke at all times.
With all that has happened in recent years with regard to cop shootings of unarmed and innocent Black and Brown men, women and children, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were taking their lives into their own hands when they decided to stop at a Philly Starbucks to have a business meeting with a friend. Philly is located in America, after all. The end-result could have been both tragic and far too commonplace.
The two young businessmen are still processing what happened to them and formulating a plan of action for what happens next.
“You go from being someone who’s just trying to be an entrepreneur, having your own dreams and aspirations, and then this happens,” Nelson told The Associated Press. “How do you handle it? Do you stand up? Do you fight? Do you sit down and just watch everyone else fight for you? Do you let it slide, like we let everything else slide with injustice?”
Starbucks has terminated the employee who called the police on the two Black men for attempting to use the restroom without buying anything and refusing to leave the establishment when asked by her to do so. Good for them.
Starbucks will also close all 8,000 of its stores on May 29 to give its employees racial bias training. Even better.
What is not known is how its employees will respond to that training. Some will take it to heart and make a conscious effort to treat everyone the same. Others might be annoyed or angered by the mandatory training and seek new ways to disrespect patrons of color. Some might simply quit and move on to jobs that don’t require them to respect people of color.
Hopefully, the training will teach these employees something about basic human decency and empathy, and help them to learn to respect the personal dignity of others.
Each of us should ask ourselves how we would feel if it had been our son, grandson or nephew that had been denied a chance to come in out of the cold weather to wait for a business associate, to sit down while waiting or use the restroom without ordering something to eat or drink because of the color of his skin, his clothing or appearance.
If they pay close attention, Starbucks employees might learn that Black and Brown men, women and children get tired like everyone else. We get cold when exposed to the elements and know what it means to be hungry and thirsty. We bleed, cry, hope, dream and feel all of the things other people feel. We die when shot repeatedly by police and feel the same pain and heartache that other groups feel.
We are fully human.
We should all remember that there is no magic wand, mystical words or silver bullet to make white supremacy disappear.
We didn’t get here overnight and the problem will not be solved overnight.
The grim reality is that there are still too many people in America who have been taught all of their lives that white privilege and white supremacy are their birthrights and that they have a constitutional right to do whatever they please to people color.
Those days are over.
What is needed is a “mancott” of all companies across the nation that treat and view us as less than human and whose owners and executives contribute to political candidates, parties and foundations who clearly do not have our best interests at heart.
After laying the foundation for this nation with our blood, sweat, toil and tears, we deserve better. But we won’t get better until we demand better and are willing to do without some luxuries, like a fancy cup of mud in the morning or say, a bus ride in Montgomery, Alabama.
Much of what we need to know to gain political and economic power we should have learned from the lessons of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.
In case we didn’t get it, the great abolitionist and freedom fighter Frederick Douglass made it very plain for us: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
All power to the people.
This article originally published in the April 23, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
