Tomorrow afternoon, May 29, Starbucks will close its shops to provide “racial bias training” for its employees. This was precipitated by an event in one of their Philadelphia stores earlier this year when a white employee called the police because two black men used the rest room and were sitting at a table without ordering. The men were accused of trespassing.

Nalani Cobb writes about this in the New Yorker and includes the list of reasons white people have recently called the police about black people. It's a list I've read before. I guess that's why the statement below seems particularly interesting.

The crucial aspect of the Starbucks story isn’t whether a company can, in a single training session, diminish bias among its employees. It’s the implied acknowledgment that such attitudes are so pervasive in America that a company has to shoulder the responsibility of mitigating them in its workforce.

As Cobbs says, there is always skepticism about such attempts. But that is no reason not to try. I look forward to the end of bias in public spaces.