June 12, 2020
To: xxxxxxxxxxx, owner
White Electric Coffee
Providence, Rhode Island
Dear xxxxxx,
We are current and former staff who care about the future of White Electric and we are writing in regard to your recent and longtime behavior around issues of racial justice. Because silence can equal violence, we feel it is necessary for us to speak up collectively at this time. We are concerned whether your public social media posts are in fact sincere, and hope that by addressing past issues and current demands, you and your business can be held truly accountable to improving in the future.
While you can’t be judged for the first 7 years of White Electric under previous ownership, since you purchased the cafe 13 years ago, among the dozens of staff, you have never hired or seriously considered anyone who is Black and you have only hired 3 people of color. In thirteen years. You haven’t taken direct responsibility for this, offering the public an incomplete portrayal of your hiring practices, as you describe in your instagram post of June 8:
“Our hiring practices have always been the same; we hire friends or go to the resume pile, often we would rely on word of mouth. My staff always said we need to do it differently! But 90% of the time it ended up being business as usual. All I ever wanted was for my community and my staff to be proud of White Electric. So moving forward things are going to change, I want/need to hire more diversely from the community, experience or not, maybe we have to give people the experience. I need to advertise hiring differently, rather than interview 3 people maybe 10.”
Staff and former staff have brought to your attention for many years the need to hire more diverse employees, while you have repeatedly and actively disagreed this should be a priority. It is not the case, as you outline in your post, that the reason such hiring hasn’t happened is coincidental or due to lack of BIPOC applicants. There have been multiple Black and POC applicants who were qualified with barista experience, who you failed to hire or even interview. One person, a young Latinx woman, who you did hire several years ago, only after strong urging from staff, you fired after a few days when not satisfied with her performance. To the staff who had encouraged her hiring, you touched their arm and said “this is why we hire friends.”
In fact, in addition to hiring “friends” you have also hired various people who aren’t friends or known, including people who had little or no prior experience. The commonality among those you have preferred to hire is not that they are “friends” or experienced, but that they are white. One POC employee you hired after much lobbying from staff, and said you were only doing so “as a favor” to staff because they had worked there a while, at the same time reiterating your position that mostly no one else cared about the lack of diverse staff at White Electric. You also planned to pay this person less, with no tips, despite their barista experience, something other staff had to lobby against, since such an unfair practice had never been done before, including for white hirees with less experience.
The bar has always been higher for POC and impossible to reach for Black applicants, even those who are qualified. With one Black applicant, someone who staff recommended and who had experience, you made an excuse that lack of follow up was because you tried to email them and their email didn’t work (when it did). Another Black applicant who staff knew, who came with recommendations, and who had experience, you dismissed as too eager and did not even give a chance at being hired. These are just a few examples, there are many more. You have had plenty of opportunities to hire Black and POC staff and you have chosen not to over and over.
Several years ago, in a conversation with staff who tried to encourage diverse hiring, you used similar messaging as your June 8 post, but at that time saying the cafe WAS diverse because staff included a mom, gay guy, people with tattoos, etc. When it was pointed out to you that this was insufficient because everyone was white, you did not agree that was an issue. After being confronted by staff about the pressing need for a more diverse hiring pool, you seemed stressed and overwhelmed by the prospect of having to weed through all the applications that would come from specifically searching for BIPOC employees. That staff offered to do it for you to take the weight off your back. Nothing was done. Why?
You have had years to figure this out. You have been offered guidance, offered assistance, you have had many private conversations and received private messages from current and former staff, including people of color, but you did not respond adequately or at all. Recently you have even misportrayed the voice of a former staff of color, to your own benefit, implying to current staff that you had a good dialogue and found resolution, when in fact there had been an exchange of private messages that were yet unread. Some of us have been hesitant to discuss these issues with you because you have a history of acting very defensively toward employees who raise these workplace concerns. Some of us are white-passing and have never felt comfortable telling you about our Black and mixed family because of the way you have dismissed and diminished our concerns. We are exhausted. Only last week did you eventually react and showcase, under public pressure.
As far as your individual racism, beyond hiring discrimination, for years staff have noted your insensitivity and fragility, even implying that you are somehow disadvantaged as a white guy. You have shown this behavior with actions and words, including when, after Trayvon Martin was shot (when it was not yet known that the assailant was POC), you sympathized with the assailant being suspicious of a person wearing a hoodie and to staff who argued and disagreed with you, you said “why can’t the white man get a break”. This attitude is dangerous in the context of Black people’s everyday survival, and in particular considering the many Black and POC youth who attend the 3 nearby high schools, and who already face racial profiling and the threat of harm throughout the white supremacist structures of society.
More recently, it took multiple private and public messages before you made an instagram post in support of the current movement, and even then it was vague, saying you would “hire more” (more who??), and it took further pressure before you would explicitly say “Black Lives Matter”.
We saw on May 23 you shared with the public a social media video showing the cafe’s new interior and the reinstalled wall down the center of the space. You mentioned how the wall was up with posters for "that little touch of community”:
“And for all you old school White Electric fans the old poster wall is back! Perfect to separate the ins and the outs and we won’t lose that little touch of community, flyers are always welcome.”
We noticed from the May 23 video how the wall you put up did contain some of what staff had curated and considered the “permanent posters”, but was visibly missing the poster that said “Black Lives Matter.” It was disappointing you had chosen to disclude it on the installed poster wall, but not a surprise, considering how years earlier when the poster was first put up you tried to move it out of sight to the back dish room, and only with staff pressure was it allowed to hang in the front, next to the more acceptable “Community is Stronger than Hate” poster (which did make its appearance on your new wall). To this, we insist that the Black Lives Matter poster, and more importantly the message, should have been considered “that little touch of community” when you decided which flyers to hang. That community can only be stronger than hate when Black Lives Matter. Two weeks later, on June 5, you decided to hang the BLM poster in the front window, in the wake of demonstrations, property damage, and pressure on local businesses to show support. And you have started handing out posters too. You’ve even changed your profile picture. We see these actions, and while it appears to be a step in the right direction, understandably we are concerned based on your past behavior that these current overtures may be mere performance.
In your post of June 8 you also stated:
“I promise in the next 20 years to be more of a leader and more of a community builder. Here’s to the future! Let’s go!”
Rather than framing this as a need to lead, we encourage you to be humble, listen, take the time to reflect on your prior behavior, follow the lead of Black communities and communities of color, and follow words with actions.
To ensure your words will result in substantive improvement to White Electric, to make sure it is a safe and accountable space for BIPOC staff and customers, we are asking that you take the following steps in the coming months:
1. Listen to and follow the leadership of BIPOC communities.
2. Acknowledge, without being defensive or making excuses, exactly the harm you have caused in the past (as outlined above), how you have ignored, shunned, and gaslit staff and others who tried to bring these issues to your attention, how you have set a disappointing example as a high-profile local business owner. Apologize publicly for your actions. Pay BIPOC staff, former staff, and community members for the emotional labor they have given you toward these issues.
3. Enroll in sensitivity / implicit bias / anti-oppression training that pays someone to help you on your journey of recognizing white privilege and working to dismantle it. We will select your trainer. Acknowledge your unearned privilege, both individually and systemically/historically (as a group), as a white able-bodied cis hetero man. Share updates on your progress.
4. Learn key concepts and your role in upholding or dismantling systemic inequity: white supremacy, white privilege, white fragility, white savior complex, microaggression, structural racism, anti-racism, implicit bias, xenophobia, colonialism, imperialism, indigenous genocide, police brutality, prison abolition, military industrial complex, cis-hetero patriarchy, toxic masculinity, transphobia, rape apology, intersectionality, white flight, redlining, gentrification / displacement, gaslighting, virtue signaling, performative allyship, allyship, capitalist exploitation, ableism, and more.
5. Actively choose a side. Denounce police brutality. Denounce white supremacy when you see it and assist other white people in finding ways to dismantle it. Denounce cis-hetero patriarchy and assist other cis-hetero men in finding ways to dismantle it. Etc.
6. Make White Electric wheelchair accessible. (You have been asked to do this for years. There is only one step. You can figure it out.)
7. Be transparent about your business and share your profits. Stop telling staff you aren’t making money. Provide an annual report of your earnings. Make it clear if and how much you have received in federal (PPP) or state funds to use for payroll during the pandemic, and detail how you will pass this on to staff. Donate to BIPOC-led organizations that work toward abolishing systemic inequities. Offer an annual scholarship to local low-income BIPOC high school students, from whom you have extracted wealth over many years.
8. Hire BIPOC staff in a way that reflects the diversity of the cafe’s customers and neighborhood. Create a hiring committee with current staff and pay them to assist you with this.
9. Pay everyone at minimum a living wage. This is even more important for BIPOC who have historically been disproportionately exploited within the food service industry. In addition to your home in Barrington and your second home, you own the physical cafe space, a valuable asset in a gentrifying neighborhood. You can afford to make sure the staff whose work enriches you are paid enough and offered enough hours to comfortably meet their basic needs. Better yet, consider profit-sharing or transitioning to a worker owned co-op.
10. Offer regular pay raises for staff. Offer hazard pay during the pandemic. Offer extra pay for working on holidays. Don’t threaten to eliminate the free employee lunch. Don’t use staff break time to talk to staff, in particular about work issues.
11. Stop pressuring staff to be paid under the table, something that deprives the state of funding and deprives staff of future earned benefits, including unemployment and social security.
12. Offer healthcare and paid sick days so staff do not feel pressure to work sick for fear of losing income. Create a specific proactive healthcare plan for staff who have returned to work and are at risk of contracting covid19 in the workplace.
13. Offer paid personal days and vacation time for staff.
14. Do not lie to staff and/or use lies to pit staff against each other. Do not share private or medical information about staff with other staff, unless given explicit permission.
15. Do not lie to the public about workplace conditions. Do not speak on behalf of staff without their explicit permission. When making public social media posts regarding matters of community and justice using "I" or "we", sign using your name(s) and/or specifically describe who the message is from.
16. Listen to staff. Respect that staff should have a space and time to discuss work issues and bring any grievances, individually or collectively, to your attention. Co-create with staff a grievance procedure that is transparent. Take staff suggestions to continually improve the workplace environment. Welcome a union (neutrality agreement) if staff so chooses.
17. Now, and moving forward, let you and your business be held accountable to staff, customers, and the broader community.
We hope you will take this letter to heart as not just a letter for you, but a letter for this moment. For too long many businesses that have the appearance of being progressive (ie tattoos, art, etc.) have been given a pass even when they too uphold the injustices of white supremacy. Whether through racist hiring practices, low pay or hours, amassing of white wealth, gentrification, criminalization of the poor, or simply ignorance, our hipster businesses should be held accountable too. In this era, when as a society we are looking to undo structural inequities, all workplaces must be examined under an honest lens. We need to go beyond slogans and window dressing if we truly want to achieve racial justice. Those that choose to rectify past harm can set an example toward reconciliation and trust, and we encourage you to choose that path for yourself and for White Electric. We look forward to seeing your action plan to fulfill our demands and ask for your response in the coming week.
Co-signed,
Thirty-nine Current and Former White Electric staff
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