Waffle House, Starbucks, Implicit Personal Biases, and Black Community Response
On April 12, 2018, two black men sat at a Starbucks and waited for a friend before ordering. Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson asked to use the restroom and were instructed that they needed to order something before being allowed to enter the bathroom. They entered the establishment at 4:35. At 4:37 the police were called to remove the men from the premises. The men were arrested and later released with no charges because the police recognized that the complaint was unnecessary. Videos of the men being arrested were circulated on social media and immediately went viral, along with calls for the boycott of Starbucks. Protesters and demonstrators filled the location in acts of resistance and civil unrest.
Starbucks took full responsibility for the obvious racial biases of the employees it its highest levels of management. Starbucks issued an apology to the men and to the black community at large. Starbucks fired the employee responsible for the unnecessary call to the police because they were acting outside of their corporate policies. Starbucks then took a step above that to institute a day of companywide training to prevent such an incident from occurring again. Despite Starbucks taking full corporate responsibility for the incident and taking steps to prevent another incident- calls to boycott Starbucks because of this incident continued on social media.
Nelson and Robinson have since gone on television calling the incident “not about race” and detracting from the valid criticism of the racist employee and Starbucks has seized this opportunity presented by these men to “call for reconciliation” between them and the racist employee that was fired. Typical framing of race issues in this country is that the “healing” of racists is the responsibility of the victims.
So, here we have the black community mobilizing, even after just corporate action was taken, for the defense of two men who turned around and spit in their faces by denying their encounter was race based in the first place. Remember this.
On April 20, 2018, Chikesia Clemons entered a Waffle House after a night out with friends and entered a verbal disagreement with a Waffle House employee who attempted to charge her .50 cents for using plastic utensils, Chikesia asked to speak to the manager. While waiting to speak to the manager, the restaurant canceled her order, and called the district manager claiming the customer was being abusive and refusing to leave. The manager told the waitress to call the police. According to Chiquitta Clemons-Howard, the mother of the victim, they were never asked to leave by neither the police, nor the waitress.
A video circulated on the internet of the victim CALMLY conversing with officers about the absurdity of having the police called because a racist waitress wanted to charge her unnecessarily for her use of utensils. The video then skips to officers roughly handling the victim on the floor (who is attempting to lift her dress over her exposed breasts) and threatening to break her arm. The victim was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace (two superfluous crimes). Waffle House has defended the actions of the waitress as “appropriate”, yet there have been no calls for boycotts and there have been no protests.
The victim and mother are very vocal about getting justice for her mistreatment, but the black community has not been nearly as loud in response as they were with Starbucks and I have several theories on why.
Robinson and Nelson are more “respectable”. Respectability politics benefits Robinson and Nelson who are college grads (a fact that news media is harping on, as only those who are college educated are apparently less deserving of racism. Nelson and Robison are black men and the black community is always more apt to support black men who are victims of racism than black women- even those that deny that racism was a factor in their mistreatment. Intra-communal misogynoir is as much of an implicit bias for the black community as the racist biases that are present in American society at large. The black community always seems to have more unconditional support for men who are willing to turn their back on us and shy away from the real issues than for black women who are willing to fight the fight, as with Stephon Clark.
Black women are always the first to mobilize for the defense of black men with little to no reciprocation when we are victims of the exact same violence and it’s getting increasingly tiring to observe.
The intersections of sexism, classism, elitism, and racism are where silence for victims like Chikesia Clemons are met. And it says just as much about the black community as it says about white America.
As opposed to Starbucks, who took full responsibility for the implicit biases of their employee, fired her, and instituted company wide training for prevention, Waffle House is defending their employee as “appropriate”. Let’s see how the black community responds to a company that endorses racist employees that lead to brutalization and endangering of a black Women vs a company that took full responsibility for a racist employee that put black men in harms way.
I already, unfortunately, know the answer.
Read More:
On Being “Race First”, Stephon Clark, and Gendered Black Community Hypocrisy
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