Stillman College business expert weighs in on racial bias training in companies

TUSCALOOSA, AL (WBRC) - We're looking into racial bias training across industries in the U.S.

The training will be a focus for Starbucks, which announced it will close all eight-thousand U.S. stores for one afternoon, to avoid a repeat of the incident that went viral on social media and forced the CEO to offer a personal apology.

According to Stillman College's, Dean Isaac McCoy, of the School of Business Tech and Financial, industries have been doing gender and racial bias training for years.

But he said it's going to take larger brands such as Starbucks, H&M and Uber consistently doing this type of training to influence other companies to make it mandatory.

Growing outrage of this viral video involving the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks over loitering, initially prompted the CEO to apologize.

To take it a step further, the company is having a nationwide racial bias training for store employees, closing stores May 29th. But what's the end goal?

"We have to understand individuals like or companies like Starbucks have to protect their brand. This is damage control. Will this stop this from ever happening at another Starbucks? No because you can say the manager went rouge," said McCoy.

McCoy said racial bias training is usually enforced after something happens not during initial employee training for most businesses.

Although McCoy said this training is a good start, the deeper problem is a societal cultural issue.

"How do you change the way society looks and talks about people of diverse backgrounds particularly of African Americans," said McCoy.

McCoy said other than racial bias training, Starbucks can look into their hiring practices, who's in leadership and how do they do franchises to help change any racial bias culture, within the company.

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