Chick-fil-A Blasted Once Again After CEO Asks White People to Shine a Black Stranger's Shoes

Daniel S. Levine

06/21/2020 07:40 pm EDT

Chick-fil-A came under fire again after CEO Dan Cathy suggested White people should shine the shoes of Black strangers as a way to make up for racism last week. Cathy made the comments at a roundtable in Atlanta with Christian rapper Lecrae Moore and Pastor Louie Giglio. The exchange shocked Twitter users, and many brought up the fast-food chain's donations to anti-LGBTQ groups.

During the event at Passion City Church on June 14, Cathy noted that protesters vandalized a "dozen" Chick-fil-A restaurants in the past week. He pleaded with White people to "see the level of frustration, exasperation, and the sense of hopelessness that exists among some of those activists within the African American community." Cathy said the country is in a "real bad situation," and Americans cannot "let this moment miss us. It has to hurt us."

Then, Cathy said racial injustice has to "hurt us, we as Caucasians until we are willing to pick up the baton and fight for our Black, African American brothers, and sisters." He suggested one way he suggested Whites could redeem themselves is to "find somebody who needs to have their shoes shined; we need to just go right on over and shine their shoes," adding, "Whether they got tennis shoes or not, maybe they've got sandals, it really doesn't matter." Cathy then crouched to clean Moore's sneakers with a brush, reports The Daily Mail.

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Cathy's comments were not the only controversial remarks during the roundtable. Giglio was widely criticized for suggesting people should use the term "white blessing" instead of "white privilege," reports Fox News. Giglio said White people "understand the curse" that was slavery, but "we miss the blessing of slavery, that it actually built up the framework for the world that White people live in." Giglio apologized for his "horrible choice of words" in a Twitter video. Moore also said he was "very uncomfortable" and "wasn't okay with" Giglio's comments.

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In November 2019, Chick-fil-A said it would stop donating to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, two organizations that have controversial stands on same-sex marriage and homosexuality. The company said it would only donate to local food banks and organizations that work on education, hunger and homelessness, CNN reports.

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On Thursday, Chick-fil-A announced it plans to give $5 million in grants to Black-led nonprofits and other organizations helping the Black community. It will also quadruple the 2019 True Inspiration Award grants. "As a company, we are making a pledge to take action against racial injustice," Rodney Bullard, vice president of corporate social responsibility for Chick-fil-A, said in a statement. "The True Inspiration Awards have always been a platform to give back locally where our restaurants serve and by redirecting our grants to organizations supporting communities of color, we believe we can make an impact."

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