This Week In Starbucks Racism ~ The Case of the ‘Beaner’ Cup in La Cañada

[dropcap size=big]S[/dropcap]tarbucks has issued another apology for racist behavior by its employees, this time here in Southern California, where a man named Pedro who stopped at a Starbucks store in La Cañada Flintridge got to work on Tuesday morning and realized the word “Beaner” had been placed on his order as his customer name.

Starbucks confirmed it apologized to the man, but as of Thursday, there were no signs that the employee responsible had been fired or formally disciplined.

Pedro, who did not want to release his last name to media, said the Starbucks location offered him a $50 gift card as a form of an apology, but he declined as he saw it as an “insult overall” according to NBC4.

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“Beaner” is considered a racial slur aimed at Latinos, for whom beans are a dietary staple. (Urban Dictionary associates the term with "Mexicans.") Pedro told Telemundo that he was called by his name when the order was ready, so he did not believe the slur on his cup was a mistake. A coworker tweeted to Starbucks on Pedro’s behalf after the incident.

“This is not the welcoming experience we aim to provide, and we have reached out to this customer to apologize and make this right,” a representative named Ryan responded via Twitter.

His co-worker has since deleted the tweet to Starbucks, saying she deleted because they were already talking to Starbucks and confined that it was “NOT fake.”

The incident happened just days before Starbucks is preparing to shutdown thousands of stores nationwide on May 29 to train its employees on racial bias, after two black male entrepreneurs were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks while waiting for a business meeting.