Starbucks to shut US stores for ‘racial-bias education’

Starbucks will close stores and corporate offices across the United States on May 29 to conduct “racial-bias education,” the company announced Tuesday, following outrage over the arrest of two black men in one of its cafes.

It was the latest bid by the behemoth coffee chain to recover from last Thursday’s incident in Philadelphia, which was captured on video and went viral, viewed millions of times.

The video posted on Twitter by a Starbucks client shows uniformed police questioning and then handcuffing the two men, who offer no resistance, as a white client repeatedly asks an officer, “What’d they do? What’d they do?”

Starbucks said more than 8,000 stores would be closed on the afternoon of May 29 and training provided to nearly 175,000 employees, and incorporated going forward.

CEO Kevin Johnson, who has also apologized, said the company was “committed to being a part of the solution” and that he had been in Philadelphia “listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it.”

“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,” he said.

The curriculum will be designed “to address implicit bias, promote conscious inclusion, prevent discrimination and ensure everyone inside a Starbucks store feels safe and welcome,” the company said in a statement.

Philadelphia police said they received a 911 call from a Starbucks worker who said the men were trespassing, after refusing to buy anything. Police said officers had “politely” asked the two to leave before finally arresting them.

They reportedly asked first to use the bathroom, but were told it was only for paying customers.

The two men’s lawyer Lauren Wimmer told a CBS affiliate in Philadelphia that they had been waiting for a third man to arrive for a business meeting.

Indignities, suspicion 

Starbucks declined to prosecute and the men were released.

Ex-US president Barack Obama’s former attorney general Eric Holder and Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights lawyer who has exonerated innocent prisoners on death row, will be among those experts consulted on the curriculum, Starbucks said.

“Being treated with respect and dignity at a place of public accommodation is an essential aspect of full citizenship,” tweeted NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which fights for racial justice and which is also being consulted.

“The reality is that most black Americans regularly face the indignities of being treated with suspicion,” it added.

“This is a crucial next step in fighting implicit bias,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, another expert consulted.

The woman who posted the video, Melissa DePino, said a Starbucks employee called police because the men had not ordered anything, while they waited for a friend.

“All the other white (people) are wondering why it’s never happened to us when we do the same thing,” she tweeted.

“The men were sitting there peacefully quietly and they were put in handcuffs and they were walked out of the store, humiliated, embarrassed and put in a patrol car,” DePino subsequently told MSNBC television.

The video drew widespread attention. Drummer Questlove of the group Roots tweeted a question: “Waiting in a Starbucks while black is a crime?”

Starbucks has also launched a review of training and practices to make reforms where necessary, and once completed, this will be made available to other companies, including their licensee partners, it said.

The company has more than 25,000 coffee shops around the world. NVG

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Social media buzzing over Harvard grad’s spoken-word speech

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— Social media is buzzing over a Harvard graduate’s poetic commencement speech, which has garnered millions of views and the attention of celebrities.

Donovan Livingston, who received his master’s degree in education, addressed his classmates Wednesday with a spoken-word poem outlining the historic obstacles that have prevented African-Americans from getting an education.

The speech begins with a quote by education reformer Horace Mann and references influential African-Americans including poet Langston Hughes and abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

The Harvard Graduate School of Education posted a video of Livingston’s speech on Facebook, saying it was “One of the most powerful, heartfelt student speeches you will ever hear!”

More than 8 million have viewed the video, including superstar Justin Timberlake, who shared it on Facebook, adding the caption: “You don’t feel inspired?? Here you go.”


source: technology.inquirer.net

Women and African Americans lose more years of life after heart attack

Heart attacks seem to have a bigger effect on life expectancy for women and African Americans than for white men, a new study shows.

Women and men live equally long after heart attack—but because women in general tend to live longer than men, the women should be living longer after a heart attack, too, according to lead author Dr. Emily M. Bucholz of the Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut.

Much of the differences between blacks and whites in the study could be due to differences in the way the disease first appears, and the treatments used, “but for women that was not the case,” Bucholz said.

“The thing that’s completely different from prior studies is (those studies) have not factored in what is the mean life expectancy for women in the general population,” Bucholz told Reuters Health by phone.

Every year about 735,000 Americans have a heart attack, and 15 percent die from it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the new study, researchers used data on more than 140,000 Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for a heart attack between 1994 and 1995. Almost half were women. Less than 10 percent were black. The average age was 76.

White men and women hospitalized for heart attack at age 70 lived an average of about nine years afterward, compared to about seven years for black men and women hospitalized at the same age, the authors reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Men lost about 3.5 years of potential life, whereas women lost 5.5 years. Whites lost an average of 4.5 years of life, and blacks lost about 5.5 years.

Black patients tended to have more severe heart attacks and more heart failure afterward. They also had more diabetes to start with, indicating that they were a sicker population than the white patients, Bucholz said.

Not only did blacks have more cardiac risk factors at the time of the heart attack, but they “also were less likely to get acute treatments,” like clot-busting drugs or cardiac procedures like angioplasty, said Dr. Jack V. Tu of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.

Whether this is because black patients visit hospitals that provide poorer care, or they get a lower standard of care in hospitals that also treat white patients, is still unclear, Bucholz said.

This explains some of the racial disparity, she said.

Both women and blacks are less likely to receive certain types of cardiac care, but these gaps may be narrowing over time, Tu told Reuters Health by email. He wrote an editorial comment published with the new results.

“It’s not that every patient loses three years of life or one year of life, some live for 30 days, some live for years and years,” since heart attack severity is on a continuum, Bucholz said.

There is not much individuals can do to address these gender and race disparities, but overall national policy can address them, Bucholz said.

“This study reiterates that these disparities still exist, and we can do better,” she said. —Reuters