A jury previously awarded Shannon Phillips $25.6 million.
Great. Racism is bad and we should stamp it out wherever we find it. I find the punditry around this one troubling. As though white people can’t experience racism.
As though white people can’t experience racism.
Plenty of progressives believe precisely that, sadly.
White people can’t experience systemic racism in the US. A whole load of people can’t articulate the difference between systemic racism and plain ol race based bigotry racism.
Anecdotally, but I (a white dude) have been told that my race would eliminate me for job consideration in the past.
I’m not equating the systemic racism against whites to that suffered by other minorities, but to claim it simply doesn’t exist is wrong. I’ve experienced it.
Edit: I should clarify that I am Canadian, but the culture is similar enough for my point to stand.
I’d like some more context if you’re trying to make a point
Sure. The point I’m trying to make is that I, a white dude, was told by hiring managers at several places including government agencies that I would not be considered for the position as I was white and at the time there were policies in place that prohibited the hiring of white men. Ergo, there was systemic racism in place at that time.
That’s not racism.
What exactly is your point? Where and when were white people denied jobs because they were white? You say you experienced it, but you also just say that someone told you about it. I’m pretty skeptical that you experienced systemic racism towards whites lol
So because you don’t believe it happened, it couldn’t have happened? How enlightened of you. FTR: Have you heard of affirmative action? Spend some time thinking about what that was and all that it entailed to the individuals at the time it was implemented.
I literally don’t know what happened because you haven’t told us. All you said is that you heard about it.
Affirmative action is not systemic racism. Are you seriously making that claim? If so then you’re obviously arguing in bad faith already.
First off I never said I “heard” about it. I said I was told. As in when I went in for a job, I was told I wasn’t going to get it cause I was white. And they (govt agency) were not permitted to hire white people.
And affirmative action was absolutely systemic racism. It was literally telling people and institutions that they needed to hire less white men and more minorities. I’m not arguing that it was a necessary evil required to correct years of injustice. I’m just saying that at the time it was implemented (also the same time I entered the work force), govt agencies and private companies were essentially strong armed by the government to not hire white men. How is that not systematic racism?
Listen we obviously have different stances on this and I’m not going to get into a drawn out argument over this. I do t care that much, it was years ago. But don’t tell me that it didn’t happen. I’m was there, you weren’t.
Absolutely anyone can experience systemic racism in the US or anywhere else, white people are just less likely to than others.
Here are some examples of systemic racism against white people.
Too much nuance for the average American to contend with, unfortunately.
I try to make sure to verbalize the difference in these conversations and label them separately as systemic, such as government and other systems dictated by the majority race. White people can’t experience that kind of racism most of the time, because they are usually the majority party in those systems.
And then interpersonal racism. The racism anyone of any race, creed, or color can experience and put out on others. You could be the last of your kind and still be a horribly racist motherfucker when it came to your interpersonal relationships. And you could hate and be racist against any race whether they are the majority or not.
I think the problem stems from there being two beliefs (that I know of so far) where people believe in systemic racism and some believe in social racism. My fiance believes in systemic racism where you can’t be racist to someone who is white because their race is in power of the government, we bud heads all the time because that doesn’t make any sense to me
Those concepts are not mutually exclusive jesus fucking christ. Both can exist.
That’s because it’s literally true.
Phillips, 52, claimed in her lawsuit that “her race was a determinative factor” in Starbucks’ decision to fire her in the wake of a 2018 racial firestorm.
In April 2018, two Black men – Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson – were arrested while waiting for a business meeting after an employee called 911 and accused the men of trespassing after they refused to make a purchase or leave the store. The arrests sparked nationwide protests and prompted Starbucks to close some of its stores for a day for racial bias training.
Less than a month after the arrests, Phillips was notified of her termination, despite claiming that she wasn’t at the store that day and was not involved in the arrests in any way.
I don’t know if it was because of her race, but if she really wasn’t at the store that way, it does sound like retaliation.
It pretty obviously was, which is why the case was so obviously a slam dunk. Basically, she stood up for the employee who called the police (essentially Starbucks’ policy at the time when people wouldn’t leave the establishment after being asked first), and got fired in turn as Starbucks was trying to clean house on the whole thing and not get called racist. She definitely had a case.
Retaliation for what?
Retaliation by Starbucks for the bad PR.
Comment deleted
(Had to do the edit because the delete function wouldn’t work)
What question?
Replied to the wrong person. Sorry
Huh… So companies can’t be racist against white people?!?
I hope this brings about a whole ton of new lawsuits as workers finally say enough is enough with token hires which push out white employees only to fill a position with a minority just to fill some arbitrary and rather bullshit diversity target.
I hope this brings about a whole ton of new lawsuits as workers finally say enough is enough with token hires which push out white employees only to fill a position with a minority just to fill some arbitrary and rather bullshit diversity target.
Middle aged white guy here. I’ve been in my field about 30 years. I’ve had a lot of different jobs in that field. I’ve worked with a lot of people who weren’t white. Somehow, in all that time, I’ve never run across one of these “token hires” who were only there because of their skin color.
I’ve met a lot of bigoted, racist white folks though. When you look like the stereotypical maga, folks are pretty free to share their ugliest opinions with you. Most of them have no idea (and will never try to deepen their understanding) about why the benefits of diversity are more than just not having exclusively white faces around.
Ditto here: I’ve actually seen “token” hires on gender (and only in one place), never on race.
Furthermore, that one place which had gender quotas and which at least in the departmemt I was working with clearly had hired some people for their gender, not their competence, had massive corporate culture and even profitability problems (think bankrupt bank with strong political connections that got unconditionally rescued with taxpayer money after the 2008 Crash and just kept losing billions and getting even more disfunctional).
It makes zero business sense to care about anything but competence when hiring somebody, and I say this as somebody who has actually been part of hiring decisions in a few places.
Old lady here - I was the first woman in my role in a couple of jobs back in the 80s and was accused of being a token plenty of times. Had to slog my way uphill through a mountain of sexist shit every single day while seeing men cruise along because they played golf with someone high up.
The “old boys network” is still alive and well, though its “membership” criteria are usually on things other than gender specifically: for example in the UK “membership” is often having gone to the right exclusive private schools and as those are often gender-segregated (i.e. “all boys schools” and “all girls schools”), you end up with discrimination in both the gender and social class one was born in axes.
Personally I find the whole “being buddies with the boss” type career progression extremelly unprofessional and any manager who is taking decisions in a professional capacity based on who his or her mates are, is working against the best interests of the company and needs to be replaced.
Then again, my professional training during my core professional learning years was mostly done in The Netherlands so I’m very strict on such things in the context of the management cultures in other countries I worked in such as the UK and Portugal were cronyism is rife in management, often linked to the kind of pre-existing relationships formed in non-gender-neutral situations.
PS: And the place were I saw “token” women openly had quotas and the incompetent but somehow working here thing only affected permanent employees in management positions. The interesting part is that of the 3 female low level managers in my department one was clearly very competent, one was clearly very incompetent and one was unclear. Further, this was the single most sexist (as in, very machist) place I ever worked (and my career now spans two and a half decades and 4 countries).
I get the feeling that the very competent manager there who happenned to be a woman lost from there being quotas for female managers rather than gained from it (she constantly had to prove her competence and was often not take seriously), whilst clearly the incompetent one was only there because of quotas and in meetings acted as an “attractive female provider of adoration” for her manager.
None of this justifies the unjust treatment you suffered, by the way.
There were two women that were rumored to have been hired/promoted into a VP position and a Director position only for their gender about 6 years ago. I didn’t work with either of them closely. They both left the company a year later. I’m not sure whether that was vindication of the rumors, or just a turn of circumstance, but worst case their gender bought them only a temporary position.
Just to be clear - plenty more women in both leadership and technical positions, and have been for years. Just those two were the only ones where I ever got a hint of that sort of thing.
Yeah, this one time was also the only time I saw any such thing and my career spans over 25 years and 4 countries.
I think we’re overall in agreement, just putting a finer point on it - On this and the related racial topic, I’m of the opinion that far more people think these policies result in unqualified people getting jobs they don’t deserve than ever actually happens. No business has payroll to spare that they can just shovel onto worthless bodies to satisfy diversity goals, and I refuse to believe that there’s more than a vanishingly small percentage of folks who remain in such a position longer than the time it takes for management to realize they are worthless.
Well managed places hire the best person for the job and don’t need to try to hide the visible results (racial or gender imbalances in a company which cannot be explained by pre-existing manpower inbalances in that professional domain) of the kind of widespread mismanagement which includes treating hiring responsabilities as a license to do favours for one’s mates, using yet more merit-ignoring practices such as quotas.
It really isn’t a benefit for anybody to be hired as a token anything because places which hire people for token reasons are just covering up mismanagement with it and are thus not good places to work in.
PS: I can tell you from my own professional experience which is quite extensive (as I worked as a Freelancer in most of my career so saw a lot more places than average) that lots of places do have payrol to spare and there’s a lot of wastefulness going on in the business world: the idea of a Free Market where there’s lots of competition is pure fantasy in a lot of domains and even in competitive areas non-core-business departments often have a lot more budge than they would if they were in an Industry were what they do is core to the business.
On the outside of businesses, the Economy is riddled with markets with less than “flat playing fields” (most of them, actually have barriers to entry, some even being natural cartels and monopolies) and the very same informational-advantages that allow for example companies in expert domains to swindle non-expert customers (say, car mechanics overcharging) also apply inside the companies themselves (which is why people at times discover to their surprise that the CEO of their company is a complete total idiot).
On the off chance you’re only stupid and not just a racist arguing in bad faith - did you miss the part where she won the suit and is getting $27m?
