A campaign for a conversation about race doesn't seem very promising when it's sponsored by a large corporation.
Cross posted from Pruning Shears.
Now that Starbucks is winding down its somewhat poorly received Race Together campaign, we're starting to hear from its supporters. Soledad O'Brien defended it, saying (emphasis in original) "there was something aggressively interested in challenging people to have a conversation who were not the kind of people who generally have these conversations."
The problem is that not all conversations are equal, though. Tressie McMillan Cottom responded to the initiative with a great piece about the quality of the discussions that would be on the menu. As she writes, people don't really have a problem talking about race at all - if the talk is about sharing one's opinions or feelings. She also notes that some of those opinions might not be very enlightened, either: "There is no reporting yet on whether Starbucks issued a training module on 'when the customer is always right and the customer wants to be right and racist'."
Which is both hilarious and true. After all, "I'm sick of all these uppity Negroes" is a conversation about race! Is Starbucks comfortable hosting that conversation in its stores? Are baristas instructed to steer the conversation in a certain direction or discourage certain viewpoints? If so then fine, but the company should also advertise its position on the subject - not bill it as a completely open-ended discussion.
Sharing opinions about race doesn't strike me as likely to promote more enlightened views on the subject, especially given the context. There won't be much complexity in a discussion held while people are in line for a cup of coffee. How exactly will there be nuance in a thirty second snippet of talk? What kind of insight can be shared so quickly on such a huge topic that might prove thought provoking or that might challenge pre-existing beliefs?
Big businesses are notoriously risk-averse. They don't look to invite controversy. Yet discussions about race that go beyond platitudes tend to get very animated very quickly. If the discussion they want to have is along the lines of "deep down inside we're all the same," well fine - but generic calls for diversity or equality aren't going to change much of anything. Everyone this side of the Grand Wizard is on board with that. Those discussions don't get interesting until we start talking about how it translates into practice. Starbucks saying it wants to talk about race might give it a halo for some (like O'Brien), but for others (like Cottom) it isn't very edifying unless we are also talking about racism.
And what might a conversation about racism look like? How about this: are there ongoing negative effects from slavery or has that terrible legacy been entirely remediated? One could argue that the passage of civil rights legislation, voting rights laws and so on have created a level playing field. Or one could argue that slavery echoes through our history via Jim Crow, redlining, and so on - down to the present day in the form of stop-and-frisk laws, punitive fining, and so on.
How about this: The United States paid reparations to Japanese-American citizens sent to internment camps during World War II. Are reparations to African-Americans for a few hundred years of slavery appropriate? I bet that would make for a lively discussion in the coffee line! And of course for these kinds of discussions it isn't enough to just sound off, it's good to have supporting material. It also requires a certain familiarity with that topic, not just a gut-level belief in how the world works. And, as Cottom points out, it's also the kind of thing she gets paid to cover. Expertise doesn't just happen, and we shouldn't expect those who have invested in expertise to share it for free any more than we would for, say, a plumber. (Or maybe Starbucks is developing a socialist streak?)
This isn't about Starbucks not having the kind of conversations I'd like it to have. I mean, it is but it isn't. Any discussion worth having on the subject will be contentious, and any discussion that isn't will be superficial. Starbucks seems to be trying to thread a very fine needle: Getting credit for raising an uncomfortable issue and encouraging discussion on it, but without actually addressing any of the substance of the controversy.
Which could make the situation worse instead of better. After all, if people spend a minute or two chatting about "hey what's it like to be black?" or whatever, and then congratulate themselves that they've done something, it crowds out room in the discourse for consideration of the much thornier issues. Marginalizing those subjects even more than they already are (it's possible!) is no trivial thing. In fact, trying to prevent that from happening is something worth being aggressively interested in.