Made Believe Racism

I’ve just come across this news and it went viral. 

So I’ve decided to post my view here and let others be the judge. 

As everyone suffered from this COVID19 issue, certainly some got bigger impacts than others. 

Racism is a powerful thing and certainly has no place in this country.

However, COVID19 brings out the worst of the people and we are seeing more and more news about it. 

This guy’s garage door got vandalised 3 times in the past week or so. Not once but 3 times. The message is pretty clear and I don’t think I need to spend more time explaining what that means. This guy got my sympathy and the vandalism should stop - period. He has done nothing wrong to deserve this. 

Then we have a “Stefanie” girl who posted this online. She certainly got her 3 mins of fame as this post went viral. My view is that those letters and meaning are open to interpretation. 

If there is any element of doubt, then we should give the people the benefit of doubt. But Stephan continued to post comments that may or may not be factual on Starbucks’s website. In the freedom of speech, she is definitely within her rights to voice her opinion but we should equally expect some facts and logic behind it. Purely saying that Starbucks is a racist company is absurd (based on the picture above alone). Her comment is so biased that it left no room for the doubt, what kind of picture she is trying to paint here? 

As a matter of fact, if you walk into any Starbucks, what you’d see is multicultural team working behind the counter. I think I can rest my case. 

I only have the following questions here: What if Stephanie got it wrong and the girl did not have any malicious intention towards Stephanie? How would the counter person feel now? Should we pick on her bad handwriting? Aren’t this just another form of discrimination? 

Updates: I think if we have more COVID19 cups, then I can see issues. 
But an one off disputable incident - shouldn’t we offer the benefit of the doubt?! 



PS: The first step to solve racism is understanding. We are in a diverse world and people come from different places with different experiences. If we couldn’t even accept the fact of different handwriting styles, how could you expect racism to go away?