The left loses it over
two black men arrested in Starbucks
By Rachel Alexander
web posted April 23, 2018
Lately it’s become amusing to watch the left
hold itself up to impossible, ridiculous standards. This time they are calling
for a boycott of Starbucks over the arrest of two young black men who were
hanging out in the coffee shop without ordering anything. They were reportedly
waiting for a friend to show up for a meeting. When police asked them to leave,
they refused, so the police arrested them. Philadelphia Police Commissioner
Richard Ross, who is black, defended his officers, saying the pair were asked three times by police to leave.
The left claims that the two black men were
racially profiled and that is the real reason they were arrested. However, one
of the police officers who helped arrest the pair is black — but don’t expect
to read that anywhere. An observer caught the arrest on camera and it soon went viral. The hashtag
#BoycottStarbucks was started. Activists are calling for sit-ins at Starbucks
without ordering anything in order to make a statement, daring employees to
call the police on them.
At worst, there was an employee who decided to
call the police because the two men were black. If so, that employee, who was the manager, should be disciplined. But to blame the
entire chain on the actions of what may have been a rogue employee? The coffee
shop where the incident took place is located in Philadelphia. What are its
policies on loitering, and have employees called the police on whites loitering
before? It may have been a regular practice that had nothing to do with race,
but due to crime in the area. Were the men acting suspiciously? Did the manager
recognize them? Without knowing more details, it’s too soon to conclude it was
the result of racism.
Starbucks is owned and managed by people on the
left. The company goes out of its way to promote diversity. No one really
believes Starbucks is a racist company. Tarnishing Starbucks’ reputation and
business chainwide over the actions of one possible rogue employee is overkill
and a punishment that doesn’t fit the offense. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson apologized to the two men and said the store manager never intended for them
to be arrested.
But this is becoming a common occurrence on the
left, to turn on itself over impossible standards. It is currently doing the
same thing with the #MeToo movement. Starbucks has 238,000 employees. To ensure
that not even one of them ever does something wrong in regards to race, sex,
etc. is unrealistic. Yet the left has now become convinced that anything other
than these impossible standards is racist. One critic tweeted, “It
may be 2018, but it seems we still need a strong civil rights movement now more
than ever.” Another compared it to “the lunch counter battle of the 1960s all over again.”
Racism has been eradicated more than ever in the U.S., but you’d never know it
from the progressives trying to blow up any incident, no matter how small or
mistaken.
In San Luis Obispo, activists made a scene out of a racial incident. Minority students boycotted Cal Poly’s annual
Open House to protest a fraternity member who wore blackface. Twenty years ago,
no one would have thought twice about someone painting their face black. Now,
one rogue person who engages in the behavior results in tarnishing an entire
institution. The university was not responsible for the student’s actions, nor
would it have approved of them. An article about the incident drastically asked, “Is Cal Poly Safe for Minorities?” The fraternity member apologized, saying “[M]y ill-informed decision to paint my face black had
nothing whatsoever to do with racism or discrimination.” Cal Poly has over
20,000 students. It cannot possibly police the actions of every student when it
comes to political correctness.
The left claims that the right is full of
fascists dictating how people should live their lives, but this is proof it’s
the left that is taking their viewpoints to an oppressive level. When the left
won’t even let itself operate normally, you know the situation has
gotten out of control. 
Rachel Alexander and her brother
Andrew are co-Editors of Intellectual
Conservative. She has been published in
the American Spectator, Townhall.com, Fox News, NewsMax, Accuracy in Media, The
Americano, ParcBench, and other publications.