Starbucks Responds to Ferguson Shootings by Launching 'Race Together' Campaign: Will it Work?

By Staff Reporter - 17 Mar '15 17:23PM

Baristas at the 4,700 U.S. Starbucks locations are being encouraged but not required to discuss race relations with customers.

Starting this week, Starbucks employees, otherwise known as baristas, can write the words "Race Together" on cups to initiate conversations about race issues.

The initiative is a result of a forum the company held in December at its headquarters in Seattle, where employees were encouraged to discuss their thoughts on racial tension in the United States after police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York.

The company also placed advertisements in the New York Times and USA Today with the phrases "Shall we overcome?" and "Race Together."

"It's an emotional issue, but it's so vitally important to the country," Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told his staff of nearly 200,000 workers in a video released Monday.

"I don't feel, candidly, that staying quiet as a company and staying quiet in this building is who we are and who I want us to be," he said. "We're going to find a way to thread our values and our sense of humanity into the national conversation, and perhaps we can have some effect on the national discourse."

The Seattle forum was followed by others in Oakland, Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York and Chicago - discussions that were attended by more than 2,000 employees, the company said.

"In the midst of a conversation with partners in St. Louis, a soft spoken young man shared that he was proud to have reached the age of 20," the company wrote in a blog post.

"The magnitude of that statement might have been lost on many in the room, but for me, it brought to light a deeply troubling situation. For some young people in our country, just staying alive is their biggest and most important accomplishment," said Kelly Sheppard, a Starbucks 15-year partner who attended two of the forums. "How could that be in 21st century America with all of the promise and opportunity our nation provides?"