星巴克董事长舒尔茨号召种族团结有错吗？

Lessons From #RaceTogether
星巴克董事长舒尔茨号召种族团结有错吗？

Howard Schultz has a way of making a believer out of you.

霍华德·舒尔茨(Howard Schultz)有办法让你成为信徒。

I first found this out in 2008, when I was writing the Talking Business column for the Business Day section of The Times. With Starbucks floundering, Schultz, who was then the company’s chairman, had fired the chief executive and retaken the position, which he hadn’t held since 2000. The question I asked, in a somewhat snarky column, was whether he was still “the right guy to bring Starbucks back.”

我第一次发现这一点是在2008年，当时我正在为《纽约时报》商业版(Business Day)写商业评论(Talking Business)专栏。当时，星巴克(Starbucks)陷入困境，时任星巴克董事长舒尔茨解雇了首席执行官，重新担任这一职务。此前，他曾担任该公司CEO，直到2000年。在一篇有些尖刻的专栏文章中，我提出了一个问题——他是否仍是“能够使星巴克恢复发展的正确人选”。

Not long afterward, Schultz asked me to meet in him New York. Instead of berating me, or even arguing with me, he simply told me his story, a story that began in the housing projects of Canarsie, Brooklyn, where he grew up poor, and ended in Seattle, where he bought a tiny coffee chain and turned it into, well, Starbucks.

不久之后，舒尔茨邀请我在纽约见面。他没有责备我，或与我争论，只是给我讲了他的故事，故事从布鲁克林区卡纳西的住宅小区开始，在西雅图结束。他在布鲁克林长大，过着贫穷的生活，最终在西雅图买下了一个小型咖啡连锁店，并将它打造成了星巴克。

What I remember most about that conversation was Schultz’s insistence that Starbucks could not be just another faceless corporation. It had to be a company with values. Hence his insistence that part-time employees get company-sponsored health care. Or the company’s early stance in giving benefits to same-sex partners. Or granting stock options to baristas. Listening to him, there could be no doubting his sincerity — or his passion.

我对此次对话印象最深的是，舒尔茨强调星巴克不能只是又一家没有个性的公司。星巴克必须成为一家拥有价值观的公司。因此，他坚持为兼职员工提供公司购买的医保。该公司早就表态会为员工的同性伴侣提供福利，并为普通店员提供股票期权。听到他的话，无法怀疑他的真诚或激情。

I turned out to be completely wrong in questioning his ability to return Starbucks to financial strength; its market value today is around $72 billion, up from $5.3 billion in 2008. And I admit, as I’ve gotten to know him better, I’ve lost much of the skepticism I might have once had about his powerful sense of social mission.

结果证明，我对他改善星巴克经营状况的能力的质疑是完全错误的，星巴克的市值从2008年的53亿美元（约合328亿元人民币）升至目前的720亿美元。我承认，随着我对他的进一步了解，之前对他强烈的社会使命感的怀疑大部分都已烟消云散。

In recent years, he has tried to use his voice — and Starbucks’ footprint, as he likes to call it — to help not just his employees but the country. In 2011, fed up with political polarization, he called for a political contribution boycott until the two parties began to work together again. With the economy stagnant, he began an effort to make small business loans, partly with money from the Starbucks Foundation and partly with customer contributions. Last year, his concern for the plight of veterans led him to co-author a book about veterans with Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who covered the Iraq war for The Washington Post; make a $30 million contribution toward veterans’ efforts from his family foundation; and vow to employ 10,000 veterans. (Chandrasekaran became such a believer that he left The Post to start a media company, in association with Starbucks, that will use storytelling to tackle important social issues.) Some of these ideas were stronger than others, but they were all genuine attempts to make a difference, rather than corporate gimmicks.

近些年来，他努力通过自己的声音——和星巴克的足迹，他喜欢这么说——帮助员工，以及这个国家。2011年，厌烦了政治分化的舒尔茨呼吁抵制政治捐款，直到两党开始恢复合作。经济不景气时，他开始了一项为小企业提供贷款的工作，资金部分来自星巴克基金会(Starbucks Foundation)，部分来自客户的贡献。他非常关心退伍军人面临的困境，这促使他在去年与拉吉夫·坎德拉萨卡伦(Rajiv Chandrasekaran)合著了一本有关退伍军人的书，后者曾是《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)驻伊拉克战地记者；他通过家族基金会向退伍军人捐赠了3000万美元；并誓言聘用1万名退伍军人。（坎德拉萨卡伦成为舒尔茨的信徒，他离开了邮报，与星巴克联手创立了一家媒体公司，通过对故事的讲述来解决重要的社会问题。）有些想法比其他想法更有说服力，但这些都是真正尝试做出改变的举措，而不是公司的噱头。

All of which brings me, inevitably, to his latest initiative, on race relations. Last month, Schultz started something he called Starbucks’ Race Together campaign, suggesting that baristas write #RaceTogether on coffee cups, and see where that led. It backfired. “Honest to God, if you start to engage me in a race conversation before I’ve had my morning coffee, it will not end well,” tweeted Gwen Ifill, the co-anchor of “PBS NewsHour.” And that was one of the tamer tweets. Schultz was mocked for, essentially, being a middle-aged white guy who was tackling a subject that was beyond his ken — or that was inappropriate for a corporation.

这一切让我不可避免要提到他最近有关种族关系的活动。上个月，舒尔茨开始了他所谓的星巴克“种族团结”(Race Together)活动，建议店员将种族团结字样写在咖啡杯上，看看会引发何种反应。结果事与愿违。PBS《新闻一小时》(News Hour)节目的联合主持人格温·艾菲尔(Gwen Ifill)发了一条Twitter帖子：“向上帝发誓，如果有人在我大清早喝上咖啡之前，就开始拉我参与有关种族问题的讨论，那是不会有好结果的。”这条评论其实还是相对温和的。人们主要是嘲笑舒尔茨这个中年白人不自量力，或者说这是个不适合公司涉足的问题。

But I think that, despite the mistakes with Race Together, Schultz’s actions over the past few years have earned him the benefit of the doubt. He is the rare chief executive who is willing to stand for more than quarterly profits, and isn’t that what we want from our corporate chieftains? And whatever mistakes Starbucks made in rolling out its campaign on race, it will learn from them.

但我认为，尽管星巴克提倡种族团结的活动不尽完美，舒尔茨在过去几年的行动为他赢得了一定的信任。他是为数不多的愿意关心季度利润之外的问题的首席执行官，这不就是我们希望从企业领导身上得到的吗？无论星巴克在开展种族活动时犯了什么错误，该公司会从中吸取教训。

So will Schultz, who says he has no intention of turning back. So far, he has held 10 forums for employees to speak their mind on race relations; I watched a tape of a recent one in Atlanta. It was raw, visceral and, at times, deeply moving. He has promised that Starbucks will hire 10,000 youths who are neither in school nor in the work force. He is going to open stores in disadvantaged neighborhoods, including in Ferguson, Mo. All of his initiatives are geared toward one ultimate goal: to re-establish the American dream, “not for a select few, but for everyone,” as he put it to me in an email. He wants future generations to have the same chances he had.

舒尔茨也会吸取教训，舒尔茨表示他不打算回头。迄今为止，他已经举行了十次讨论会，让员工对种族关系发表意见；我看了最近在亚特兰大举行的讨论会的录像。那是直白的、发自肺腑的讨论，有时非常感人。他曾承诺，星巴克将雇佣1万名既没有上学也没有工作的年轻人。他将在密苏里州弗格森等地的贫困社区开店。他所有的举措都指向一个终极目标：就像他在给我的邮件中写的那样，“不是为少数人，而是为每个人”重建美国梦。他希望后代能够拥有他所拥有的机会。

“I view this effort as being quintessentially Howard,” said Mellody Hobson, the president of Ariel Investments, who sits on the Starbucks board. When I brought up the criticism of Schultz, Hobson, who is African-American, replied, “If he wakes up one day and decides he wants to help improve race relations, what’s wrong with that? He could be doing something else. Or nothing.”

艾瑞尔投资公司(Ariel Investments)董事长、星巴克董事会成员麦洛迪·霍布森(Mellody Hobson)说，“我觉得这是霍华德的典型做法。”当我提到针对舒尔茨的批评时，霍布森回复道，“如果他某天醒来，决定帮助改善种族关系，这有什么错呢？”他可以做其他事情。或者什么也不做。“霍布森本人是一名非裔美国人。