The Abyss

                By now nearly everyone has heard of the brouhaha surrounding Starbucks.  Two black men were arrested for trespassing.  According to the manager who called the police, she asked them to leave repeatedly.  According to the men themselves, they were meeting a friend to discuss a real estate venture and didn’t want to order until he arrived. 

              What happened next was the kind of explosive media storm that has become all too common in today’s world, enough that people are immune to it, sick of it, and dismiss it. 

                I spend way too much time on the comments section of various websites.  It’s like eating candy.  I know it’s not good for me, and will make me look bad, but I just can’t stop.  But I digress.  Basically, I’ve noticed a phenomenon on these sites.  When any sort of minority is treated disrespectfully, be it someone black, Hispanic, or a woman, the majority of people try to find a reason to make it their fault.  They side with authority, even when the authority is clearing, unequivocally, wrong.  Even when authority is proven wrong beyond any shadow of a doubt, they will continue to go to ridiculous lengths to blame the victim. 

                This is troubling to me, because it hearkens back to Nazi Germany, when a significant portion of  the most celebrated, intelligent culture in the world, the culture that brought us Sigmund Freud, Martin Luther, Mozart, Nietsche, Goethe…collectively went mad, blindly following a lunatic into hell like the children in some macabre, twisted version of The Pied Piper of Hamlin.

                We’re not far from that.  We’re gazing into the abyss. 

                In the recent case I just cited, unbeknownst to the manager, the two black men walked past a camera operated by another business on their way to enter Starbucks.  The camera recorded the time as 4:35.

                The manager made her first call to the police about the recalcitrant, disruptive men refusing to leave Starbucks at 4:37.

                The friend they were meeting was due to arrive at 4:45, and footage of the incident taken from cell phones shows he was on time. 

                The manager has been fired, because her story of asking the men to leave repeatedly because they were refusing to order could not possibly have been true.  How many times could she have asked them to leave in two minutes?

             According to the men themselves, one made for the bathroom upon entering the café.  She informed him that he couldn’t use the bathroom unless he ordered something.  He explained he was meeting a friend for a business meeting at 4:45 and they would order once the friend arrived.  Even so, he sat down because he didn’t want to cause trouble. 

         Already, he could sense the manager had an issue.  She approached them again and said they had to order something to remain and asked them if she could get them some water, juice, coffee, anything.  Both men explained again that they were waiting for a friend to arrive before ordering and they were good for the moment. 

                Next thing they knew they were being arrested.

                The manager was clearly racist.  She obviously did not want them in her establishment.  The fact that she noted their entrance into the café and moved immediately to block them from using the restroom speaks to this.   I’ve used many a bathroom in cafés, fast food restaurants, etc., without purchasing anything and never in my entire life has anyone challenged me.  And not for nothing, if someone needs to use the bathroom, let them use the goddamn bathroom.  What if they have diarrhea and are rushing to make it on time? 

                She was racist.  This was a racist incident.  Do I think that makes Starbucks racist?  No.  But, in our country we have a doctrine that makes employers responsible for the behavior of their employees.

                What has been boiling my blood is the following assertions, made by the usual suspects in the peanut gallery. 

1.       The Men Planned This to Make Money.  That is one of the most ridiculous statements I have heard, and yet plenty of people out there are touting this conspiracy theory.  Yes, those two twenty-three year old men knew that if they arrange a business meeting at 4:45 and arrived early, at 4:35, they’d be arrested.  They knew this would happen.  Because Starbucks has a reputation of kicking out anyone who doesn’t immediately order.  Except they don’t, and people sit around at the one closest to me for hours with their laptops. 

2.       The Men Were Loitering.   Except, they weren’t.  Not according to the evidence which shows an elapse of only TWO minutes before the police were called. I don’t know the exact definition of loitering, but goddamn if you were arrested every single time you entered a store, restaurant, etc.  and didn’t buy something within two minutes, none of us would ever leave our houses.  Screw that shit, I’ll just order what I need online.

3.       The Men Were Told Repeatedly to Leave.  According to them, they were not.  They were told they couldn’t stay if they weren’t going to order.  They replied they planned on ordering when their friend arrived.  Simple.  Something people do every single day.  The manager did not say, “I’m calling the police if you don’t leave now.”  According to their story, she appeared to accept their explanation.  They were shocked when the police arrived.

4.       The Men Were Disruptive.  Yes, they were so disruptive in the two minutes that elapsed between them passing the camera outside and the 911 phone call to the police.  Every single person in the café has asserted they were polite and peaceful. 

5.       They Were Trespassing.  At Starbucks?  This isn’t someone’s private fenced in property with TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT signs posted everywhere.  Legally, the men were what is termed as “invitees,” which means they were invited onto the property either implicitly or explicitly.  As invitees, they are owed the highest duty of care. 

6.       Business Can Refuse Service to Anyone They Want.  Yes, we’ve all been in those places where the proprietor has signs up reserving the right to refuse business to people at their discretion.  Psst…let me tell you a secret, they don’t hold up in court.  Most people see a sign like that and think businesses have those rights.  They don’t.  In order to maintain a license to operate, there are certain rules and regulations they must abide by, and not discriminating on the basis of gender, race, sexuality, religion, etc. is one.  That’s why all those Christian bakeries are in hot water for refusing to make cakes for gay weddings.  You cannot operate a business in the US and discriminate against people.  Just like you agreed to abide by the rules of the road when you got your driver’s license, they agreed to abide by the rules of business when they got their business license.  You don’t have the freedom to drive two hundred miles an hour and they can’t refuse to serve certain people.  Your freedom stops when it infringes upon the freedom of others.

                We need to wake up and realize something.  All these incidents being reported are not made up, not distorted, the victims are not to blame, and the media isn’t trying to make something out of nothing.  The reason you never heard about any of this before was because people tolerated it.  For many years, black people put up with being treated as second class citizens.  They were brainwashed into believing it was their place.  Just the same way women have been brainwashed into believing they are not worthy of the same respect as men. 

                I give a massive eye roll when people say, “none of this ever happened before.”

                No.  It happened all the time, just not to you.  You’re only hearing about it now.

                People don’t want to hear about it.  We don’t want to know that people of color suffer in our society, because then we have to look at ourselves and own up to the ways in which we contribute to it.  For instance, I will admit that I get nervous whenever there are black men around me.  I’m on my guard.  Why?  Statistically, black men are no more likely to rob and rape me than a white man, they just go to prison for it more often.  In fact, the men that have hurt me have all been white.  So, what is that instinctive ripple of fear washing over me?

                It’s social conditioning.  Brainwashing.  A lifetime of images and comments and beliefs that have been systematically instilled in me since day one, and it’s a cancer eating away at this entire nation.  Owning that small part of you and denouncing it takes courage, and most of us don’t want to do that.  It hurts too much.  It’s easier to turn away and pretend that the two men were arrested because they did something wrong, and that it wasn’t about their color.  Because then we don’t have to admit to ourselves that we may have felt threatened by the presence of those men too.  Maybe not enough to call the police, but they would have made us nervous.  We'd have kept an eye on them while ignoring the crackhead doing drugs and playing with his dingus in the corner because he was white.

                So, we accuse minorities of always playing the race card.

                We say things like, “I’m not racist, but…” But nothing.  If you find yourself making that statement, you're racist.  What you really should be saying is, I don't want to be racist, but I am. 

                We think if we deny the existence of racism, we don’t have to look for it in ourselves.  It’s easier to blame everyone else, then own up to the simple fact that we’ve somehow been socially conditioned to view black men as threatening.  We need to find out how and why this has happened, so we can change it.  And it’s not as simple as “Don’t be racist.”  Most people don't want to be racist.  I've seen acquaintances (they're no longer FB friends, if they ever were) posting memes that are virulently, stomach turningly racist while claiming to love everyone.  It's like a serial killer who thinks he's a good person because he murders prostitute.  They're only racist against people they believe deserve it.  Which, is, um, everyone who isn't white. 

                The fact that I’m still racist despite my attempts to reason my own brain out of it is a source of consternation.  I’m losing a battle with myself.  We are all two people, the idealized version, the person we wish we were and almost are, and  then who we really are.  And the saddest thing is who we are has been shaped by outside forces, and it’s hard to undo years of brainwashing.  I’ve written a lot about how hard it can be to erase the message given to you in childhood by bullies.  The truth is, it’s hard to erase any of the messages given to you in childhood.  But it can be done.

                And it must be done.  The best way to stop hearing about these racial incidents anymore is stop them from happening.  Not silence victims or get the media to stop reporting it.   We need to come together as a society and study what has gone wrong.  Stop blaming victims.  

                  Let’s back away from the abyss before it’s too late.