After Starbucks announced its #RaceTogether campaign on Monday, many online users aimed their racial concerns toward the Twitter account of Corey duBrowa, the company's senior VP for communications. But the heat proved too much for duBrowa to handle: By Monday night, his Twitter account was deleted, CNN Money reports. He was back online last night, with a link to a Medium post explaining his short-lived departure. "Last night I felt personally attacked in a cascade of negativity," he writes. "I got overwhelmed by the volume and tenor of the discussion, and I reacted." Another reaction to the backlash: "I also blocked a handful of Twitter users—given the hostile nature of what I was seeing, it felt like the right thing to do," he writes.
His moves didn't go unnoticed, with Mediaite posting screenshots of Twitter users posting questions to duBrowa such as "Are you going to educate your workers on race relations and racism in America?" and "Will you compensate them for this?"—followed by screenshots of a notification he'd blocked them. Meanwhile, as frustrated users called him a "coward" for bolting, the main Starbucks account tweeted: "It's worth a little discomfort. Here's the what and the why of #RaceTogether," with a link to the campaign explainer. duBrowa's reappearance on Twitter seems to be accompanied by a new attitude after a good night's sleep. "No matter how ugly the discussion has been since I shut my account down, I'm reaffirming my belief in the power of meaningful, civil, thoughtful, respectful open conversation—on Twitter and everywhere else," duBrowa writes in the Medium post. (It's not Starbucks' first social mission.)
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