starbucks’ ‘implicit bias’ training might fail to make a difference by not addressing the root cause of racist behavior

As previously reported, Starbucks is shutting down thousands of coffee shops this afternoon in order for their employees to get racial bias training. The decision was prompted by recent incidents involving their staff demonstrating anti-black behavior.
It has been reported that the company had initially partnered with a zionist group to conduct it, which raised concerns about the real intent.

‘Implicit bias’ training is often seen as very progressive. However, it should be noted that there are some serious doubts about the efficiency of these trainings.

As explained by associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley Nikki Jones, these conversations are often “too comfortable”, by failing to address head-on racism’s relationship to power, privilege, and the systems that are in place.

In other words, they only focus on bias as an individual/personal issue without questioning the bigger picture, the root causes that make it possible. This seems to assume that racist behavior just happens ‘inadvertently’ due to unconscious bias. It gives a lot of credit to people who have shown time and time again, no matter how educated they are, or how ‘liberal’ they are, that anti-blackness is in the fabric of a white supremacist system and society.

Regarding the content of the Starbucks training, NPR reports: “In the training, Starbucks’ employees will use a “Team Guidebook” to follow a sequence of videos, including one that features the hip-hop artist Common discussing what he says is a life skill: how to make other people feel welcome. ‘I know that for me, welcoming people in my life starts first with sharing who I am,’ Common says in the video, according to a transcript. That segment is followed by a five-minute session in which workers pair off and discuss the question, ‘What makes me, me? And you, you?’”
Seriously?
Besides, so far, data hasn’t shown the efficiency of such trainings. If anything, it shows that they don’t really make a difference. This article details the doubts they raise. Among other things, “HR departments quickly picked up the theory, and implicit-bias workshops are now relied on by companies hoping to create more egalitarian workplaces. Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley giants proudly crow about their implicit-bias trainings. The results are underwhelming, at best. Facebook has made just incremental improvements in diversity; Google insists it’s trying but can’t show real results; and Pinterest found that unconscious bias training simply didn’t make a difference.”
Starbucks’ management is probably aware that a 4-hour training won’t solve racism, but do they also understand why these trainings often don’t make a significant difference? Will they tackle the big picture, the system in place, white privilege, anti-blackness, instead of focusing on individuals and ignoring the root causes? Probably not, unfortunately.

Hopefully this won’t be yet another vain “white liberal” move to feel better about themselves, with no real effects on the problem. Either way, Starbucks is still very much a part of gentrification, a process that pushes people of color out of their neighborhoods.

– Words by Nounouche

Starbucks is giving its employees “implicit bias training.” But what does that even mean? pic.twitter.com/50PzdSXbLz

— AJ+ (@ajplus) May 28, 2018