I admit I am addicted to Starbucks coffee, particularly the concentrated brew that I can get for extra money on the Clover machine at my local joint. My husband insists I have a store locator chip in my brain (this before I had my i-Phone app with the actual – and BRILLIANT – store locator).

But, I am worried about my coffee joint. It is importuning me to discuss the issue of race in the U.S. with my barista. Indeed, as many news outlets have reported, I am not alone. We don’t want “race together” scrawled on our cardboard coffee cups (we non-ecological folks) or, as apparently my local Starbucks determined to be the middle-ground, written on a tiny whiteboard on the counter area in front of the barista “stage.”

Race matters, in many, many ways in the U.S., but here is why I fear for my beloved Starbucks when it decides to interject open discussion of this unresolved topic into my morning coffee.

1. I am an employment lawyer. Let me refine that. I am an employment litigator. I defend employers when they are sued. This concept is beyond “diversity training gone wrong” where some “luminary” decides that the males in the office need to decide how it feels to be groped and ogled by the other sex (and so makes that one of the diversity training exercises, resulting in lawsuits). Asking your average barista to field discussions about race is above their pay grade and may lead to situations in which THEY feel harassed based on a protected characteristic/view (let’s just say divergent views on any number of topics – such as Ferguson and the propriety or lack thereof of the police conduct – do not neatly align with coffee house conversation).
2. My parents schooled me that there are certain conversations that you save for people whom you know – politics and religion among them. I thought my parents were bourgeoisie when I was 21. I now understand at 54 how spot-on they were.  It is not low-brow to appreciate that certain debates are not appropriate in certain contexts (such as a commercial transaction when all I really want to do is wake up my mind, not debate the origins of oppression).
3. I believe that conversations about important topics should be generated by thoughtful, deliberate dialogue.  I truly respect each and every person who provides me service. I was them 40 years ago. But I was not qualified to mediate discussions of race when I was a waitress and I think asking that of these folks is just not fair.

So, please, Starbucks, “stay in your lane.” You are fulfilling my need for superb coffee that gets me going each day. I have your app on my phone. I am happy whenever you are there in a faraway place that I travel to (although, candidly, not so much in Italy – you don’t cut it there).  But I worry for you when you try to extend yourself – and your unwitting staff – into discussions that are bound only to alienate your loyal clients and, even more troublingly, result in your staff filing claims that they were subjected to racially hostile working environments when they are subjected to “divergent views on race” that simply do not belong in the workplace. With that, I would like a tall Brazil in a Grande cup on the clover (and please, write nothing but “tall” on my cup). Thanks loads!