Right-Wingers Create Fake Starbucks Coupon With Hidden Racial Slurs and Neo-Nazi Code
The coffeehouse chain Starbucks found itself in hot water this weekend after a Philadelphia location had two black men arrested for refusing to buy anything while waiting for their white associate to show up. The company has since apologized, accepted the resignation of the manager who called the cops and endured local protests while officially requiring “racial-bias education” for all employees on Tuesday, May 29. However, idiot right-wingers have decided to stoke racial tensions by circulating a fake Starbucks coupon offering African American patrons a free cup of coffee. Luckily, the racist Starbucks hoax has been exposed and the culprits identified.
The fake Starbucks coupon reads, “We’re Sorry. We know we can do better. Starbucks values all people of color and we are working on employee sensitivity training. The best dialogue starts over a cup of coffee and we’d like to buy you one.”
The coupon itself is called the Let’s Talk Coupon, and, according to Think Progress, it also contains encoded white supremacist slogans:
Baristas are then told to use the discount code 1488, which combines the white nationalist 14 words phrase along with 88, which is an abbreviation for the phrase “Heil Hitler.” The QR code on the flyers also links to a website which translates the code as the n-word.
A Starbucks spokeswoman told The Washington Post, “This is completely false and in no way associated with Starbucks.”
The fake Starbucks coupon was seemingly started by 4chan, the internet cesspool that has classically tried to connect LGBTQ people to pedophilia.
So I guess the latest 4chan hoax involves fake coupons for Starbucks coffee for "people of color only." pic.twitter.com/xtSfBy51BP
— Crisis Actors Guild (@EyesOnTheRight) April 18, 2018
According to 4chan commenters, the coupon is an attempt to make black people upset when Starbucks fails to accept the fake coupon. Starbucks has long been a target for right-wing ire, particularly their holiday cups which have been criticized for not being Christian enough.
Despite the company’s upcoming “racial-bias” training for employees, Darrick Hamilton, a black professor of economics and urban policy at the New School in New York City, says that if Starbucks really wants to fix racism in its stores, it should send teams of white and black actors into stores to apply for jobs and test the service, let the public know the findings and offer clear consequences for racially problematic behaviors.
