[Editor’s note: Starbucks disputed the premise of this piece in a statement, noting that its contributions to Planned Parenthood are part of the company’s charitable matching gift program. A Starbucks spokesperson told the Washington Examiner: “Starbucks does not have a corporate relationship or sponsorship with Planned Parenthood. Starbucks is listed as a donor of an organization because the Starbucks ‘Partner Match’ program provides matched cash awards for contributions made by Starbucks partners (employees). … Most 501(c)(3) designated nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and most Registered Charities in Canada qualify to receive matching funds.”]
On Tuesday, Starbucks will have a “‘racial-bias education” day for its nearly 175,000 employees in an attempt to sweep under the rug its recent public relations nightmares.
After two African-American men sat in a Philadelphia Starbucks without ordering last month, they were arrested for “trespassing.” Ever since, the coffee giant has been doing a mea culpa for the appearance of conducting racist business practices and has announced that no one has to buy anything to sit in one of its coffee shops or use the restrooms. A second racial incident last week in Los Angeles underscored that maybe some racial sensitivity training is in order.
[Related: Starbucks apologizes after video showing arrest of two African-American men at store goes viral]
But Starbucks had racism in its corporate identity long before the April arrests.
Through its corporate donations, Starbucks contributes to one of the most racist organizations in our nation’s history. Planned Parenthood, the largest single provider of abortions in the U.S., performs more than 300,000 terminations each year.
Planned Parenthood’s disdain for human dignity, especially in the African-American community, is deeply embedded in its 101-year history. The numbers do not lie.
More African-Americans have died from abortion than from AIDS, accidents, violent crimes, cancer, and heart disease — combined. In America today, a black child is three times more likely to be killed in the womb than a white child. And since 1973, abortion has reduced the black population by more than 25 percent.
Planned Parenthood operates the nation’s largest chain of abortion facilities, and almost 80 percent of its facilities are located in minority neighborhoods. About 13 percent of American women are black, but they have more than 35 percent of the abortions.
I often say that abortion is the civil rights issue of our time. Abortion denies the rights of the innocent. It refuses to help the most vulnerable. Abortion segregates the unborn child from his or her mother, and all of society.
But Planned Parenthood’s civil rights violations go even deeper.
Abortion mills like Planned Parenthood didn’t become prevalent in the lives of pregnant African-American women by happenstance. Planned Parenthood’s business model was specifically engineered to target them.
In 2015, I joined my fellow civil rights leaders to protest the Smithsonian Institution’s decision to display a bust of Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger in the National Portrait Gallery.
Sanger, who founded the organization that would become Planned Parenthood, was an outspoken racist with genocidal intentions. Active with the Ku Klux Klan and the eugenics movement, Sanger’s stated agenda was to eradicate the African-American population. Her dream is being realized by the onslaught of minority abortions today.
Through the founding of Planned Parenthood, Sanger was a pioneer of modern-day deceptive women’s health practices and the engineer of modern-day black eugenics.
My fellow civil rights leaders and I wrote a passionate letter to the Smithsonian demanding the bust be removed. We made clear how the founder of Planned Parenthood has degraded the black community:
Planned Parenthood has spent an entire century murdering children and eradicating African-Americans. Meanwhile, the tide is turning against the injustice of abortion, with a majority of Americans saying they do not want the taxpayer funding of abortion.
It’s time for corporations like Starbucks that claim to care about “racial-bias” to stop funding Planned Parenthood’s house of horrors, which has taken precious lives away from minority communities and from society at large.
Starbucks, if you’re really serious about eliminating racism, you will acknowledge that black people, and indeed all human beings, are of one blood and one human race, born and unborn. Racism and abortion are crimes against humanity.
We’d be happy to sit down with you to discuss racial justice over a cup of coffee.
Alveda King (@AlvedaCKing) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is director of Civil Rights for the Unborn at Priests for Life and the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.
