“Everybody thought that minorities would not come and invest three or four dollars in a cup of coffee.”

Ummm, invest? Is that what it’s called now? FOFLMAO

“Minorities want brands…”

If anyone else said that…well, you know…

“what is plaguing urban America is that we just don’t have options or choices of where to spend our disposable income…”

There I was thinking that what was plaguing urban america was intractable poverty and decades of neglect of both the people and the infrastructure, policies that are designed to keep the urban poor both urban and poor, misguided programs and priorities and the gutting of all of the social/gov’t support systems in favor of corporate and richFolk tax breaks.

But no, what was really needed was branded coffee.

So. Out. Of. Touch.

Seriously, I find this partnership so sad. Why Starbucks? Why not start his own chain (if he wanted to bring “coffee investing” to the ‘hood) and set up franchises with community members as a means of keeping more of the money local? What about the locals who might have opened an indy espresso shop? (Did he actually say invest?)