By Andrea Widburg
In these dark days, I keep looking for stories promising that America is emerging from the madness that has enveloped her. One of those stories just emerged from New Jersey, of all places, where a jury awarded a white woman $25 million after concluding that Starbucks fired her on racial grounds. Given how leftists have wielded the charge of “racism” as both a shield and sword in their efforts to remake a constitutional, color-blind America, this is a heartening outcome.
Four years ago, Starbucks was in the news when two men claimed to have been the victims of discrimination after the staff in a Philly Starbucks refused to let them use the restroom and then called the cops on them. Despite the claims from the usual race hustlers in the media and society at large, the facts were a bit more complicated.
Back then, Starbucks’ policy was that restrooms were for customer use only. These men were not customers but, when they were refused access to the restrooms, they became so obstreperous that the staff felt it had no option but to call the police.
There was another fact that was almost universally excluded from contemporaneous reports: The manager of the Starbucks in which the men were “victims of racism” was black.
Certainly, Starbucks didn’t want to make a big deal out of the manager’s race. Instead, it wanted to do obeisance in the face of the media outcry to prove that it was not a racist outlet. That’s why the CEO, Kevin Johnson, flew to Philly to apologize personally to the men.
Johnson didn’t stop there. He also cut into Starbucks’ earnings by shutting all 8,000 U.S.-based stores so that the 175,000 employees could be trained about their “unconscious bias.” Again, the media and Starbucks downplayed that the Starbucks manager who authorized the allegedly biased behavior against blacks was…black.
That was just the beginning. Starbucks also fired Shannon Phillips, an upper-level executive, who is white. The ritual racial sacrifice accomplished, Starbucks probably thought it was home-free. Instead, though, Phillips sued, alleging that her firing was racially motivated.
And here’s the real kicker: In a trial held in New Jersey (a reliably Democrat state), the jury concluded that Starbucks had, indeed, fired Phillips for purely racial reasons and awarded her $600,000 in compensatory damages and $25,000,000 in punitive damages.
What’s fascinating is the insight the case gives us into how Phillips came to be fired:
In her role as regional manager, Phillips said she oversaw around 100 stores across Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.
She claimed Starbucks started punishing white employees who weren’t involved weeks later in a bid to publicly prove they were handling the incident.
Ms Phillips alleges the firm ordered her to put a white male manager, who had worked for the company for 15 years, on administrative leave because of a race discrimination allegation against him.
The allegation was based on complaints non-white employees at that manager’s store were paid less than white workers.
Ms Phillips said she argued the male manager didn’t have a say in wages. The lawsuit also said Ms Phillips objected to suspending him because she said the manager wasn’t racist and she had never seen him exhibit discriminatory behavior.
She argued, in comparison, the black manager of the store where the arrests were carried out did not face any disciplinary action.
Ms Phillips said the black manager’s subordinate was the one who called 911 after the two men sat down and refused to leave after being told they couldn’t use the bathroom without purchasing something.
Phillips’s case isn’t the only money Starbucks has lost on this matter. Apparently, it also settled with the men who complained that it was racist for them to abide by Starbucks’ policies. They received an undisclosed amount plus a promise to pay for their college tuition. In addition, Philadelphia, which had no role in the contretemps, gave them a symbolic dollar and promised to set up a $200,000 program for young entrepreneurs.
Reverse discrimination is every bit as bad as the anti-black discrimination that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had tried to erase. What Starbucks’ behavior after the men’s arrest revealed was a racial pendulum that had swung way too far to the left. Perhaps the jury’s verdict signals that the pendulum is returning to the center. The American people want a world defined by Martin Luther King’s vision of a colorblind society in which people are judged by the content of their character and their behavior rather than the color of their skin.