A month after Starbucks unveiled its”Race Together” social media campaign to talk about race (which resulted in widespread mockery), the coffee chain is opening a location in Ferguson, Missouri, the small town that caught national attention for racial tensions sparked by the death of teenager Michael Brown.
CEO Howard Schultz discussed Starbucks’ moves to address racial tension on Tuesday. In those remarks, at a NationSwell event on U.S. innovation, Schultz briefly mentioned that Starbucks had plans to open a location in Ferguson, according to Fortune magazine.
Although Schultz’s remarks at the NationSwell event centered on fighting racism and inequality, he only briefly mentioned the future Ferguson Starbucks. Fortune followed up with Schultz after his remarks but the Starbucks CEO said there was no timeline for when the Ferguson Starbucks would open. A spokesperson for Starbucks told Fortune that the Ferguson location is part of the company’s plan to “build more stores in urban neighborhoods.”
Ferguson is 70 percent black. Starbucks, Fortune noted, tends to have locations in majority white neighborhoods.
In 2014, Ferguson was the small city of Missouri just outside of St. Louis that saw massive protests over the shooting of Brown, who was black, by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who is white. A St. Louis grand jury decided not to indict Wilson in the shooting.
The shooting and following crackdown by police resulted on mass protests put Ferguson in the national spotlight.
(H/t: TPM alum Ryan Reilly)
Free donuts for the cops!
Maybe the intentions are good here, but I somehow doubt that the lives of Ferguson residents will improve because more of them start paying $4 for a cup of coffee.
Right…because black people are apt to flock to Starbucks with their laptops (or the occasional ironic typewriter) to pretend they’re writing the great american novel while dressed in retro-grunge plaids, man-scarves, wood-framed glasses and 80’s sweaters, sporting a pompadour and neckbeard…sitting around sighing loudly after each slurpy sip and discussing the latest Starbucks CD offering before strapping the typewrite to an old-school bicycle and peddling off in their toe-shoes and mis-matched socks on the way to their spirulina colonic.
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSFrEdk6GW1vf6vkxSkU_OeiuVnumQtIg8vSipHKmjoET2EhUGu
Fail.
Besides, their coffee sucks…tastes like burnt fashion sense and thwarted dreams.
I hate their coffee too, but why shouldn’t kids in Ferguson be able to do the same stupid stuff as everyone else in America?
Chillax…I was just taking advantage of an opportunity to manufacture a sarcastic pooping-on-hipsters rant.
Besides, embedded in my comment was the assumption that they wouldn’t want to, because, well, have you ever been to a Starbucks and looked at or smelled these people? haha
But of course they should be able to if they want. I wasn’t at all intimating that they shouldn’t. I suppose we could categorize it as analogous to “of course everyone should be allowed to equally enjoy the misery of marriage.” ALL people are perfectly free to wear macrame hats, grow curly-cue moustachios and smell like salty garbage while they conform obediently to an imaginary counter-culture movement if they want. Quinao power!
Edit: And just so you know, I get to say this because I was a dirty hippy with long hair during the mid-90’s and followed Phish around like a religion. Still go to shows of course, but somewhere along the way I accidentally learned to bathe and hold a job hahaha…someday, hipsters will too.