The newly launched Race Together campaign of Starbucks has already received massive backlash from customers, as it seems that not everyone is willing to talk about race when ordering their coffee.
The Race Together campaign called for the baristas of Starbucks to initiate discussions regarding race while serving the orders of their customers, an initiative that was inspired by a Starbucks employee meeting held three months ago.
In the meeting, Starbucks employees shared personal anecdotes regarding racial inequality, which is often a taboo topic in the corporate setting of the United States. The meetings led to wider discussions regarding racism held in open forums across Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland and St. Louis.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was inspired by these race discussions, and looked to extend it to the company's baristas and customers all over the U.S. with the Race Together campaign.
"We have problems in this country with regard to race and racial inequality and we believe we're better than this and we believe the country is better than this," said Schultz.
Starbucks baristas have been encouraged to initiate discussions with customers regarding race, with the words "Race Together" written on the customer's cup.
However, despite seemingly good intentions by Starbucks, the massive backlash against the campaign signals that the public is not similarly inspired as Schultz by Race Together.
Users of social media criticized the campaign, mostly stating that ordering coffee over a counter is not the proper place or time to have such a conversation.
"I understand the initial backlash because you're taking someone's most pleasant experience of the day and running it smack into one of the most unpleasant conversations a person can be confronted with," said Mark Irion, president of public relations company Levick.
Irion, however, commended the effort of Starbucks, as the backlash on the topic proved that conversations regarding the issue should certainly be done.
One of the possible reasons for the criticism against the campaign is that Starbucks is usually where people grab coffee while on the go. If a customer that takes too slow to order already annoys all the people waiting in line, what about one that engages in a discussion about race with the barista?
In addition, it would be difficult to imagine that all Starbucks baristas have had the training or possess the patience to carry out such loaded conversations. It also did not help the campaign's cause that press pictures of the campaign predominantly feature white employees.
While the backlash is expected to settle down soon, it was simply too much for Starbucks senior VP of Global Communications Corey DuBrowa, who had to delete his account on Twitter after receiving personal attacks from other users of the social media website.
DuBrowa said that his Twitter account will soon be reactivated, but he had to take it down first because the attacks against him were proving to be a "distraction from the respectful conversation we are trying to start."
"We knew this wouldn't be easy, but we feel it is well worth the discomfort," said DuBrowa in an email to CNNMoney, as it seems that Starbucks will not rescind the campaign.
