When 23-year-old Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson chose to speak out about their racially charged Starbucks arrest, their commentary was full of ill-advised respectability politics, which tells black Americans that if they want to be perceived and treated positively, they must assimilate, as much as possible, to white American culture.

“You can either be ignorant or you can show some type of sophistication and act like you have class. That was the choice we had,” Nelson explained in reference to his and Robinson’s calm demeanor as they were handcuffed and escorted out of Starbucks by Philadelphia police officers.

The insinuation is that when wrongfully arrested, to become angry is to become classless. In reality, Nelson and Robinson had every right to be angry. While the anger of black men in America has been historically dismissed, dis-categorized and sometimes, at the hand of law enforcement, resulted in murder, it is justified.

Nelson and Robinson’s reactions were not wrong; they were appropriate and may have saved their lives. But, to pretend that anger is equivalent to ignorance and that to be assertive is to display a lack of sophistication is faulty on many levels.

It is high time that black Americans learn that respectability will not save them.

During the interview, Robinson went on to say that while he appreciates the public support, “anger and boycotting Starbucks” is not the answer.

However, Starbucks has been controversial for some time. In 2006, they were accused of blocking Ethiopian coffee farmers — who supply their coffee beans — from copyrighting their beans for an increase in deserved profit. Starbucks denied the accusation and, in 2007, entered a deal with the Ethiopian government. But, in 2017, Ethiopian coffee farmers were disappointed with the progress and said that Starbucks had not lived up to its promises.

This is not a new story. It is a historical exploitation that black Americans know all too well.

Although Robinson and Nelson plan to work with Starbucks at their national racial bias training day, I’m not sure that is the answer, either. I even believe that in years to come, this same thing will reappear. We’ve seen it before. We saw it with Wells Fargo, whose predecessors owned slaves, for which Wells Fargo apologized. But then, the bank faced several lawsuits for discriminatory lending practices, evidence that the apology was empty.

To put the burden of racism and discrimination on the discriminated is victim-shifting. That’s what respectability politics does, it makes the victim feel that they are the reason for the crime — in this case, racism — of the aggressor.

The black community is severely wounded. We know that collective trauma transcends the lived experience. Research has proved this to be true, just as research has proved that memories can be passed down through generations. The last thing the community needs is to believe that being less black will save them from racism.

Empty apologies and training days mean nothing when the foundation of the entire country is built on your subjugation. In the words of American film director Charles Burnett, “It is as if you are doing a surgery and you open the body and you realize that the whole body is cancerous.”

American culture rejects blackness, but there is a cultural shift happening. If there is any time that we can begin to deal with the “body” of a racist country, the time is now. To ignore that is to prepare to repeat this process in another 50 years.

Sharanna Brown

Writing since April 2018 · 1 story contributed