Starbucks incident results in progress

After a Starbucks manager in Philadelphia thoughtlessly brought about the arrests of two young black men recently, those men gave the matter some thought. The result was counterintuitive — true progress.

Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, both 23, were arrested April 12 as they waited for an associate in a downtown Starbucks to discuss a real estate venture, without ordering anything. Videos of their arrest went viral online, prompting protests against Starbucks and Philadelphia police.

Starbucks dismissed the manager and announced that it will close its stores on the afternoon of May 29 for system wide mandatory training.

It quickly reached an undisclosed settlement with Nelson and Robinson, and offered them free tuition to complete their bachelor’s degrees through an online program that Starbucks established for its employees four years ago with Arizona State University.

The two men also approached the city government with a settlement proposal — $1 each plus a $200,000 city commitment to start an entrepreneurship program in city schools.

“Rather than spending time, money, and resources to engage in a potentially adversarial process, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson approached the city and invited us to partner with them in an attempt to make something positive come of this,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement.

“This agreement is the result of those conversations, and I look forward to seeing the fruits of this effort in the coming months and years.”

“We thought long and hard about it, and we feel like this is the best way to see that change that we want to see,” Robinson told The Associated Press.

Thus, what could have been another dispiriting story about unresolved racial tension became a unified effort by the parties to foster economic and social progress.

Ideally, it will help diminish the number of future incidents. But with any luck at all, it at least will be a template for approaching such incidents.