It happens while shopping for prom, waiting for a friend at a Starbucks, leaving an Airbnb or visiting a college — minorities, most often black people, are deemed suspicious by a white person, who calls the police.
On April 12, it happened at Starbucks and it sparked a public outcry that led to the company shutting down its coffeehouses for anti-racism training. Here’s the police call from that day:
But the now infamous Starbucks incident is far from isolated and experts say it echoes a tragic past that excluded black people from public spaces.
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