Et tu, Howard Schultz

The decline and fall of corporate America proceeds apace. I am not thinking about profit and loss. I am thinking of moral character, especially the moral character required to stand up for principle... especially politically incorrect principle.

It’s as though corporate leaders have chosen to worship a Messiah named Barack Obama and are willing to purge their ranks of anyone or any group that dares to speak a disparaging word about their Savior. One is somewhat surprised to see how much corporate America is in the pocket of the American left, how much corporate leaders have been brainwashed into believing leftist ideology, how much they will immediately cave in on any principle when they are threatened by a charge of racism.

Today’s story, from Tablet, (via Maggie's Farm) concerns the effort by Starbucks, led by one Howard Schultz, to purge the minds of its employees of the last smidgeon of racist sentiment. You see, one manager in one Starbucks in Philadelphia supposedly asked two black male non-customers to leave the store. The men refused and the manager called the police. For her dereliction all Starbucks will be closed one day for sensitivity training. Every Starbucks employee will be forced to suffer this indoctrination because one woman made a bad call—or was it the non-customers who refused to leave when asked to do so. The leaders of Starbucks do not know that sensitivity training aggravates the problem. It creates resentment.

But, that’s not the end of the story. We will begin with Tablet’s summary:

After two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks earlier this month for doing nothing more than waiting for a man they were meeting, the coffee giant announced that it would provide employees in its 8,000 US locations with diversity training, and named the four experts it said will help lead the effort: Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, Heather McGhee of the liberal think tank Demos, and Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO.

So far, so good. Or so it seems. Look at what happened next:

But Tamika Mallory, a leader of the Women’s March and vocal supporter of Louis Farrakhan, objected, saying in a tweet that the ADL was an organization dedicated to “constantly attacking black and brown people.”

Mallory’s bigoted observation might’ve swayed someone at Starbucks: Last week, the chain announced that while the other three experts will still lead the training, Greenblatt will not, and that the ADL will now be demoted to a secondary role alongside “a diverse array of organizations and civil rights experts” that will provide limited consulting to Starbucks.

Notable anti-Semite Tamika Mallory— organizer of the Woman’s March— has the Anti-Defamation League demoted. 

Keep clearly in mind. Jonathan Greenblatt is not a member of the vast right wing conspiracy. He is a lifelong Democrat and worked for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Now, in today’s new Democratic Party he is a bigot. Why is he a bigot? Because he is Jewish, dummy? What did you expect when you place Louis Farrakhan’s protégé as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee? What did you expect when you put Jeremiah Wright’s protégé in the White House?

What does Howard Schultz say about all of this? What does today’s Democratic Party think about all of this? Clearly, the war against white privilege has morphed into a war against Jewish privilege:

... anyone following the current state of the Democratic Party shouldn’t have too much trouble piecing together the surprising dismissal of one of America’s most veteran and venerated civil rights groups. Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ executive chairman, is a lifelong Democratic supporter, and has donated heavily to Barack Obama’s campaign. And the Democratic Party these days is the sort of place where siding with Farrakhan—a man who calls Jews the chosen of Satan and accuses them of having played an active part in orchestrating the Holocaust—is a badge of radical chic, not a reason for disqualification.

Tablet concludes:

Considering the fact that Jews are, by far, the most prominent targets of hate crimes in America these days, giving in to anti-Semites and removing the ADL from a diversity training initiative of a major American corporation is particularly heinous. Shame on Starbucks for giving in to bigotry.

Tablet does not mention one other salient fact. Howard Schultz is Jewish.

[Addendum: The Daily Caller reported this morning that at least one Jewish group has stood up to Starbucks. Good.]