Things we'd be talking about if the forum wasn't deadFollow

My assumptions are not "generic". They are derived via an analysis of available data, and represent a "most likely" case. I clearly state this as well. You'll note that I very rarely simply say "it must be X!". I usually say something like "X is more likely than Y". In this case, I'm looking at the relative likelihood that the reason the two men were asked to leave was simply because the barista is a horrible racist who hates black men and comparing it to the likelihood that there were other actions taken, words spoken, etc, which caused her to do so. I've provided a relatively detailed explanation of my logic, which you're free to re-read if you wish. In any case, my conclusion is that it's much more likely that the one or both of the men did or said something that prompted the barista to ask them to leave, which in turn escalated to her calling the cops.

One big factor in this analysis is the two men's own reactions when the cops did arrive. They were given multiple opportunities to simply leave the store and refused. That mentality and refusal to do a pretty basic obvious thing, even when presented with the alternative of "we will have to arrest you if you don't", is a big ringing alarm bell suggesting that they likely engaged in similarly belligerent behavior with the barista. It's not proof, of course, but it's a pretty strong indicator of how they respond to authority, and provides a far more likely explanation as to how the situation escalated to them being arrested than the ridiculously unlikely and absurdly simplistic "she must be a racist!" scenario.

We know they allowed (by their own actions) the situation to escalate from a simple "leave the store and nothing bad will happen" to "being arrested" after the cops arrived. I don't think it's unreasonable at all to speculate that they made similar decisions prior to their arrival as well.

The problem with the ideology of systemic racism is that it can be blamed for anything and everything. Which makes it a useless methodology to use (well, except for the case I mention below). It also has the nasty side effect of being used as a logic crutch in preference to a better and more valuable examination of the cause of a negative outcome. And when that happens, it decreases the likelihood that we, as a society, can properly identify the underlying issues causing racial outcome disparity, and thus increases the odds that such a disparity will continue in the future unaddressed.

So yes. If your objective is to maximize the odds that disparate racial outcomes will continue to exist (presumably so you can cling to it as a social issue), then blaming everything on "systemic racism" is a great tool to use. Note, however, that you're never going to actually improve the conditions of PoCs within society as a result. You're more or less choosing to trap these people in a sub-standard condition in order to allow your social narrative of victimization to be useful for you. Which I find somewhat deplorable as a social instrument.

You can't fix a problem if you don't first correctly identify it.



I'll paraphrase my statement above: There's a massive gulf between not wanting to believe something, and not immediately leaping to the assumption of that thing. I have, multiple times, acknowledged the possibility that this event could have been racially motivated. However, I have also examined numerous alternative possibilities as well, and concluded that it's wrong to simply assume it must be race, when there are so many other possible explanations which, frankly, I find to be more probable.



It's certainly within the realm of believability. But so is the possibility that space aliens made it happen, right? Just because something is possible, doesn't mean that it must be the truth. This is where the concept of probability enters the equation. And yes, I find it far more probable that one or both of these men did or said something which precipitated the barista's decision to ask them to leave, and that both of these men refused to do so (just as they did when the cops arrived), resulting in the decision of the barista to call the police, which lead to the police asking them to leave, which they also refused, leading the police to arrest them.


The only thing missing in that chain is the first step. Which is the part we have no direct information about. So we're left with two possibilities. Overt racism on the part of a barista, despite such a thing having (as far as we know) never been acted on before by her, in a location where she presumably dealt with black customers all the time, *or* that the two men did or said something which caused her reaction.

I'm going with the second possibility as the most probable case. This does not mean that there is no racism in our society, nor that there are no racists. But in this case? It seems like a stretch. It also doesn't mean that she didn't still act in an improper manner. But, at the risk of repeating myself, there's a ton of cases of bad customer service out there, that don't involve race at all. I suspect we've all had bad encounters with a person working in some form of retail or customer service in our lives. Is it always about race? No, it's not. So why assume that if the employee is white and the customer is black then it magically becomes about race and nothing else?

I think that's silly.

Edited, May 30th 2018 5:41pm by gbaji

"y'all nig-nogs get outta town before nightfall!"

"no"

"Looks like we gotta justified lynchin' boys!! YEEEHAW!!"






*clueless observer* "golly, them negroes shoulda listened to "authority". This is their fault.SAD.

gbaji is a racist *******


Analysis complete

Except they did do something wrong. At least by the time the police had arrived. They had been asked by the business operator to leave the premises. They refused to. At that point, they are trespassing.

At that point then, weren't they still inside a private business?

Edit:
Just because I figured that's why people always protested outside places, rather than inside places, as to avoid the whole trespassing and arrests.

Edited, May 31st 2018 5:36pm by TirithRR

Yay! I made it contagious.

They weren't doing anything wrong to justify the manager telling them to leave. You protest outside because more people can see and hear you.

Edited, Jun 1st 2018 12:03pm by lolgaxe

I doubt it was within two minutes, and according to all the resources the men arrived ten minutes before a meeting and they were being arrested just before the guy they were waiting for got there so let's clock the whole sequence of events at 15 minutes. Not buying something in that time frame might be grounds to ask them to leave, but it's definitely not grounds for them to call the cops over it.

After the fact, Starbucks just changed their policy so you can hang out without purchase. Sorry, morning was all over the place. Fixed.

Also, I seem to have forgotten to press the post button here.

They the Customers, or They the Employees?

I think the bigger point here is that by the time the police arrived, the two men absolutely were doing something wrong from the point of view of those police. They don't know anything about what happened prior to being called there and arriving on the scene. All they know is that the employee has asked these two men to leave and they have refused to do so. Their job is not to assess why they were asked to leave, much less adjudicate the legitimacy of that request. They have one job: enforce the law. The law says that if someone is asked to leave a business and refuses to do so, that person is trespassing. Period. Their job is to either get the person to leave, or to arrest them if they do not. That's it.

The proper place to argue that the request was unreasonable or unfair is in the court, not at the scene with the police. While you can certainly attempt to argue with police at the scene, your odds of success are usually pretty low. The only chance you have is if the officer is the one making the accusation and not a third party. So if an officer observes something and then approaches you believing what you did was in violation of the law, you can absolutely attempt to argue otherwise (and it may work even). But if the officer is responding to a third party making a claim, and the officers observation upon arrival is that the claim is correct (which it is when the claim is "trespassing", and you are physically in the location when they arrive), you don't really have a leg to stand on legally.