Starbucks is on a mission to recruit a lost generation of America’s young, poor and unemployed to correct a decades-long pattern of neglect in corporate America.
While President Barack Obama continues to challenge the nation’s largest corporations to hire more young men of color, Starbucks is leading an ambitious effort to hire 100,000 young African-American and Hispanic employees over the next three years – a disenfranchised segment of the workforce that has been largely ignored by employers.
It’s a tall order – but a worthwhile effort that’s long overdue.
Starbucks is forming a coalition of large corporations with a goal to hire 100,000 low-income, 16-to-24-year-olds as apprentices, interns and part- and full-time employees by 2018.
Some skeptics may initially dismiss the initiative by asking how much Starbucks plans to pay those workers – which is a valid question — but I believe the idea has merit because the more workers of color who are hired, the greater their opportunities will be in the years ahead.
Consider this: In February, the unemployment rate for African-Americans was 10.4 percent, while the comparable rates for whites, Hispanics and Asians were 4.7 percent, 6.6 percent and 4.0 percent, in that order, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday.
And nationally, 22% of blacks, 20% of Native Americans, 16% of Latinos, 11% of whites and 8% of Asian Americans are considered “disconnected youth,” according to a study by the Social Science Research Council. There translates to an estimated 5.5 million Americans, ages 16 to 24, who are not employed or in school.
For the past several years, Obama has hosted economic summits at the White House to encourage America’s CEOs to hire more workers – and consider hiring more workers of color – because he knows he can’t legislate the hiring of Americans.
Last month, during a powerful eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered with nine others inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina by white supremacist Dylann Roof, Obama took a well-crafted shot a racial injustice in corporate America.
“Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don’t realize it, so that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs, but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal,” Obama said.
The Starbucks plan comes after Obama created “My Brother’s Keeper,” a sweeping national public-private partnership to empower America’s young black men and other boys of color. “My Brother’s Keeper” began in 2014 with a $200 million commitment from a number of foundations.
Starbucks Commits To Diversity In Hiring; Will More Corporations Follow? was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
