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When two black men were arrested in a Starbucks in Philadelphia while waiting for a white friend, it should have shocked Americans, but it didn’t. It was just one more high-profile encounter between blacks and law enforcement, and not even a violent one.
Yet while the nation becomes numb to such incidents, for black people, especially young black men, what happened in Starbucks is something that could happen to any of us without warning.
The Starbucks conflict started when the two men asked for the code needed to use the shop bathroom. Staff refused, noting that it is for paying customers. According to witnesses, the coffeehouse manager then called the police because the two men sat in the store without placing an order.
When police arrived, they arrested the men on suspicion of trespassing. Their friend finally showed up just as they were being taken into custody. Starbucks ultimately declined to press charges. No doubt the bad publicity generated by social media and protest factored into that decision.
What happened at the Philadelphia Starbucks is hardly an isolated incident. Sacramento Police shot Stephan Clark,an unarmed black man and the father of two young boys, 20 times in his grandparents’ backyard. The two police officers believed Clark was holding a gun before firing at him. No gun was found and only a cell phone was recovered near his body.
In the nation’s capital last year, two black teenagers, Raymond Bell and Nolan White, were selling water to tourists near the monuments to raise money for a trip to Six Flags. As Nolan and Bell were dumping the melting ice out of their bins, they were surrounded by three undercover officers who pulled out their badges and cuffed the boys before questioning began. The teenagers were unaware that they needed a permit to sell water on the Mall.
As a middle-aged black man, I have experienced my fair share of situations involving prejudice. While taking an early morning walk in my neighborhood, I was stopped by the police. According to the officer, I fit the profile of robbery suspect. The assailant was dressed in black just like I was. The policemen did not discuss the fugitive’s skin color, but I drew my own conclusions.
Both of my parents attended segregated public schools in Texas. They faced the consequences of second-class citizenship and Jim Crow’s cruelty. I grew up in the 1990s thinking that America had put aside its ugly past and made some progress. I learned otherwise as I ventured out into the world. Some people still see black men only as suspects and not citizens.
From Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell, black men have proven their courage as sentinels defending this country. But in the eyes of too many people, they remain predators, not professionals nor even parents. The Starbucks incident happened within a week of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Somewhere along the way from MLK, the baton was dropped, but a new generation of activists, galvanized by the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamar Rice and Stephan Clark, has picked it back up.
There is a chance to jump-start a movement toward real reconciliation. The CEO of Starbucks reached out to the two men who were arrested and instituted sensitivity training companywide. These are small steps, but important ones.
We can no longer assume that America has learned its lesson and that we live in colorblind society. There are too many important values, such as family and freedom, that bind us together collectively, to let bigotry and racism continue to pull us apart. The destiny of the American experiment of equality for all lies in our hands.
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Photo: Getty Images