"...I show "a moderate automatic preference for Gay people over Straight people," which, frankly, I didn't need a test to point out."

Virtue signally much?

So you are biased against straight people. And that is somehow a redeemable quality in the face of being bias in favor of gay people?

Like you said, implicit bias exists within all of us.

That's a lot of typing about a test you don't know that Starbucks is even going to use in their training.....

Yeah, doing *nothing* is working out swimmingly - if you’re white.

It’s a lot less douchey to tear down well intentioned intervention if you can suggest an alternative, but you didn’t do that.

Four hours of paid employee time that is not offset by ACTUAL REVENUE is a huge concession, and you just peed all over it.

@3 Exactly.

Also, good on Starbucks for taking some form of action and a strong stance against discrimination. They could've just put out a press release and stopped there.

I've attended, and facilitated, numerous trainings on this and related subjects. It's more about raising awareness among employees, and encouraging them to do some self reflection and think before they act, than taking any tests.

No good deed goes unpunished.

This isn't a training, full stop.

It's a PR move, and only a PR move.

@7: Even if it is a "PR move", so what?

@7: Uh huh. Paying 175,000 employees for the afternoon, losing the revenue from 8,000 stores, paying for the development of the training, paying teams across the country to implement the training in 8,000 stores......
Yeah, I can think of less expensive ways to do a little PR.

Who cares? It's a fucking store for a fucking exploitative corporate franchise in an exploitative capitalist system. Honestly, is the stupid behavior of a few staff at one store the crime of the century?

@8 @9 it's certainly not going to prevent this from happening again. It's very expensive, and that's exactly the point - would you have accepted "Thoughts and prayers" statement from Starbucks and business as usual? Look at you two, falling for the PR as you speak while not realizing its happening to you.

This might be about something if anything Starbucks did contributed to this in any way, and not merely a dumb minimum wage employee and two braindead cops. But today, April 2018, you're just as likely to get the cops called on you for loitering while black at Cafe Racer as you are a Starbucks, but as best I can tell not a single independent cafe (or any other national chain) is going to do absolutely anything.

@11: Still, if there's some awareness gained for the greater good - that's a tad better than your pouting.

@12, agreed.

@1

Unconscious bias causes conscious action.

The Barista at Starbucks didn't call 911 unconsciously, they called because they're unconscious bias against black men caused them to overreact.

Or are you suggesting that this Barista is a white supremacist just waiting for any chance to try and get a black man arrested?
Seriously though, do you think this is the first black man that ever walked into that Starbucks while that particular Barista was on duty?

@14. Actually that’s the flaw in the test. The unconscious bias is not a predictable indicator of action.

@Muffy

The key word there is "predictable."
We can assume the bias will have an effect without knowing what that effect will be.

Just as a for instance:
A woman with a bias against African American males as walking along the street at night.
She sees a black man approaching her.
There are a number of things she might do.
She could cross the street.
She could hold her purse closer to her body.
She could wrap her fingers around her keys in order to use them as a weapon "if necessary".
She could reach into your pocket and hold on to her handgun for a sense of security.
She could pull out that handgun and shoot the man.
She could pull out her phone and pretend to be on a call.
She could pull out her phone and call the police.
And so on and so on.
She could also do nothing.

The test isn't going to allow us to predict anyone's behavior, but it can help us to understand their motivation.

There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.... After all we have been through. Just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating.

Anyone taken the test? It's pretty lame and I didn't finish it.

@17. Your assumption is wrong.

That’s what the article is about.

@Muffy

Are you actually agreeing with an article in The Stranger?

The test wasn't designed to predict people's behavior.
The test was created to prove that all people have implicit bias.

@17, I'd rob you.

I'm still going to SBux. I like their coffee.

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.... After all we have been through. Just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating."
Jesse Jackson

So you're cynical about Starbucks addressing this problem and confidence that nothing will change. So? Then what? You're confident that nothing will change and they will go on discriminating against black people. And...? You think with the eyes of the county on them and everyone with a camera, nobody will record it?

Maybe Starbucks will go on being racist but they will get caught if they don't find a way to sweep it far under the rug and keep it there. If this training or that training or whatever doesn't work, they will try something else until they make sure nothing like this ever happens because when it does it will go viral.

@10 Bingo. This is all about a mega-corporation playing to its manufactured liberal corporate identity. The money on this little exercise is worth spending to them because they have savvy marketers who have finally clued in to the insufficiency of writing a press release that talks about how "seriously" Starbucks takes this. There's nothing sincere here, it's all about reputation and image manipulation.

Having said that, given all the outrage I heard about this story, I assumed that Starbucks was kicking out a paying customer or something. Lo and behold, I find that what set this off was that two guys decided to take up space in a business without patronizing that business.

Seriously, two guys putting together a real estate deal couldn't come up with the wherewithal for a couple of cups of (admittedly overpriced) coffee? Really?

Where were these people raised? Honestly, I would feel guilty walking in off the street and using a store's restroom and then leaving again without buying anything at all, let alone hanging around and taking up the limited space most coffee shops have. Do they really feel that entitled? Or am I the whackadoodle for thinking that by offering me a comfortable place to hang out for a bit, I do bear the coffee shop some obligation to support their business and employees?

I've always thought the rules here were pretty simple: you walk into Starbucks, buy a cup of coffee first and then you camp out on their wifi or whatever for a bit.

So, next thing I hear is that an arrest is an overreaction. And yeah, if the manager calls the cops randomly, without warning, without saying anything to the men, and if the cops show up and just drag them off to jail, then yeah, that would totally be a massive overreaction.

But that's not what happened. Management asked them to leave. They refused. Only then did she call the cops (which may or may not have been store policy, which was apparently ambiguous). The cops showed up. Asked them to leave. Again they refused. In other words, at every step along the way, two non-customers who were clearly in the wrong from the get-go escalated the situation at every point along the way.

Now me, if the management of a store asks me to leave, then, weirdo that I am, I leave. These guys decided they were going to stay no matter who asked them to leave. Is that actually acceptable behavior? From someone of any race?

Apparently it is. Because now, instead of a minor incident involving a couple of assholes acting like complete and total spoiled, entitled douchebags, we have protests. We are literally protesting the right of people to ignore reasonable requests from property owners and police officers and do whatever the fuck they want to do.

And this is what we are now calling "justice."

This Is like hearing that Einstein disproved Newton's theory of gravity and thinking maybe you can fly.

It's a challenge to predict biased behavior from answers on a survey. It's not a challenge to find that biased behavior exists. And there's a shit ton of science on that.

And bingo @3. I guess the author read about the IAT debates and has been waiting for a place to drop wisdom?

I was going to read this article but instead I read the USA Today Sports section while I sipped on my latte from Starbucks.

@adam. The test’s results are not accurately reproducible. The test is easily swayed by a small amount of “prepping”. And most importantly, what value is there in testing for abias that someone has no control over if that bias doesn’t actually sway their actions?

Seriously? Explain to me the value in proving that someone is unconsciously racist if they consciously are NOT racist?

@26: Well that certainly was a great big ol' wall o' text, when you could have just said that you're a white guy who doesn't really know any black people, and hasn't read any of the examples from your fellow white people of the times they sat in a Starbucks without ordering and didn't get asked to leave, or were allowed access to the restroom without purchasing anything.
It would have been more efficient.

@28: You didn't miss much. It was basically Katie going on and on about a test she doesn't even know Starbucks is going to use. She might as well have breathlessly written about how ineffective it would be to throw people in the village duck pond to see if racists float.

@30&31. Calm down. The woke olympics aren’t until 2020.

@32: Awwwww muffin, are my comments bothering you? You'll just have to gird your loins and endure them like the firm jawed, right thinking American you believe yourself to be.

@33: You're not wrong. :(

@Muffy

The test was designed to help social scientist study large populations of people, not individuals.
Before this test, these researchers and academics had to rely on polling, and people who respond to the polls often lie.
The test is not a perfect tool, but it is proven to be better than the old tools.

As for this:
"Seriously? Explain to me the value in proving that someone is unconsciously racist if they consciously are NOT racist?"
Having an unconscious bias affects people's behaviors, regardless if they are able to admit that bias to themselves or not.
Just because someone thinks
" I'm not a racist."
Does not mean that those people don't act on their implicit biases.
As an example:
You don't need to know that you are allergic to strawberries to have a negative reaction from eating a strawberry.

@Muffy

I should also mention that the test doesn't just measure negative biases, it also measures positive bias. Positive biases can also have an unintended negative influence on Behavior.

The IAT is a great example of people wanting to draw huge, sweeping lines from very very thin data for the sake of advancing some woke-ness.

The mechanics of it feel like an overconfident 13 year old thought they figured out why everyone's racist - just show them different people, then good and bad words! Bam dots connected!

@lissa. Not bothering me. I just feel embarrassed for you. You’re like a dumb blond on a date with a guy who isn’t that into her, but she’s trying really hard anyways.

It’s pathetic.

@38: Oh muffin, please try to be a little more accurate. Everyone knows I'm a redhead.
Xoxo

@26 Thank you!

@30 Thank you! I meant.

@26 Racists aren’t hard to spot especially online. Their bag of tricks never changes: quoting stats that have no factual basis, changing the subject with the old “what about black on black crime?” retort, as if they’re really concerned, misquoting history (the Irish slave mythology) and re-spinning the narrative so the protagonists seem odd, unworthy or criminal. This isn’t an exhaustive list by no means.
Let me break down your re-spin.
[ “I assumed that Starbucks was kicking out a paying customer or something. Lo and behold, I find that what set this off was that two guys decided to take up space in a business without patronizing that business. Seriously, two guys putting together a real estate deal couldn't come up with the wherewithal for a couple of cups of (admittedly overpriced) coffee? Really?”]

Really? You’ve never gone to Starbucks and grabbed a table to wait for a friend or business associate? And I love the way you eroded their credibility by throwing doubt on their ability to pay…they couldn’t really be involved with a real estate deal. Maybe like I and millions of other people, they wanted to wait for their associate before ordering. It’s called good manners.

[“Where were these people raised? Honestly, I would feel guilty walking in off the street and using a store's restroom and then leaving again without buying anything at all, let alone hanging around and taking up the limited space most coffee shops have. Do they really feel that entitled? Or am I the whackadoodle for thinking that by offering me a comfortable place to hang out for a bit, I do bear the coffee shop some obligation to support their business and employees?]
Where were you raised? What you mean is: thank God the heel of White oppression is keeping the savages under control. I seriously doubt you sweat bullets of guilt just for using the restroom. This Starbucks wasn’t even busy at the time. There were plenty of open tables. In Seattle, I can’t count the times I’ve gone to Starbucks and asked to use the restroom before I ordered and I’ve yet been refused. I always get to a meeting place early and get a table to make sure there is a chair for everyone and I’ve yet to have a manager or staff person question me or tell me to leave. And yes, they are entitled. They are entitled to be treated like a human being and to have the same expectations of service as anyone else. And Starbucks was being supported, if the manager had let them wait 15 minutes for their business associate. She called the cops five minutes after they arrived. You think treating everyone who’s non-White badly is good for business?
[“Now me, if the management of a store asks me to leave, then, weirdo that I am, I leave. These guys decided they were going to stay no matter who asked them to leave. Is that actually acceptable behavior? From someone of any race?”]

Yeah, when did that last happen to you? Why should they leave? What exactly were they doing wrong? At Starbucks everywhere right now, there are millions of business meetings, college kids studying, people talking for hours. I’ve never seen a sign posted with a drink requirement. I don’t know if I would have left. But they had more guts than most people. Thank God for them because you don’t know what it is like to be humiliated publicly for doing absolutely nothing wrong. More humiliating because they told the manager they were waiting for an associate and quietly sat down. Other customers said they were clean, well dressed and quietly respectful. And for that @26 the police were called. Their actions were no different than that of millions of people at coffee shops and restaurants nationwide.

[“Because now, instead of a minor incident involving a couple of assholes acting like complete and total spoiled, entitled douchebags, we have protests. We are literally protesting the right of people to ignore reasonable requests from property owners and police officers and do whatever the fuck they want to do.”]

Nice ending @26. Because in your mind being Black in the “wrong” neighborhood should be a crime and clearly in the video and from customer interviews these guys are the worse kind of Black person. How dare they try to hang on to their self-respect in public! @26 the only self-entitled douchebag is you and the rest of the racists. The only people trying to be reasonable were the victims. The police weren’t reasonable. The business associate, who was White, showed up and offered to move the meeting elsewhere and the police refused to just let them leave. This is like 1960 all over again. If you watch the video, the officer who moves the chairs was totally aggressive. He’s the kind of cop that likes to throw blanket parties in dark alleyways.

And really what excuse does the manager have to offer? She is just as morally vacant as the women who called the police in Seattle on Seahawk player Kam Chancellor and friends for “…pounding on the door and looking in the windows with cameras, as if they were trying to gain entry, “at a gym Kam was interested in setting up one his boot camp workouts. Yeah, in broad daylight on a busy avenue. Expensive cameras must be the new daytime robbery tool.
Yes, the list of what you can’t do while Black keeps getting longer and longer especially for Black men and boys. Racism is harmful and costly both socially, psychologically and economically. Studies show that the stress it causes leads to shortened lives and a multitude of health problems. But that’s all right with you @26 because as long as you feel elevated over someone, the world’s a happy place.