The coffee shop chain that refused service to retired GBH News reporter Phillip Martin at one of its stores recently will bolster its “anti-discrimination and harassment training,” according to its chief operating officer.
Caffè Nero COO Paul Morgan was quoted in an update published Wednesday afternoon by Boston.com. Reporter Abby Patkin writes that Martin met with company officials earlier this week for what he described as a “very cordial, pleasant conversation.” He added that he accepted their apologies, saying, “I told them I had no interest whatsoever in anyone being fired over this.”
Although Martin, a former colleague of mine at GBH, handled the situation with his customary class, what happened to him raises some troublesome issues. The facts as originally laid out in The Boston Globe were that a barista thought Martin resembled someone (sub. req.) who had recently caused trouble at the Central Square store recently, even relieving himself inside.
Yet Martin now says he’s seen a photo of that person, and he was “befuddled,” adding, “I looked at the photo, and I told them, ‘He looks nothing like me.’” Patkin reports that Martin says the person in the photo was a much younger, light-skinned Black man.
Neither the original Globe story nor the Boston.com follow-up reports whether the barista is white, although it’s clearly implied that she is given that Martin filed complaints with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and the Cambridge Human Rights Commission, and that Caffè Nero is going to double down on training.
Those of us who are white have an obligation not to fall into the trap of confusing one person of color with another. If the barista had paused for a moment and thought about whether Martin truly resembled the person who’d gone off in her store earlier, she almost certainly would have realized that he didn’t.