Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy said during a church service that one way white people can atone for racism is to shine the shoes of black people to show their “shame.”
“Most of us white people, we’re ‘out of sight, out of mind’ oblivious to it,” Cathy said on Sunday. “We cannot let this moment pass.”
Cathy, who was speaking at Atlanta’s Passion City Church, told a story about a young man who was “gripped with conviction about the racism that was happening” in his small Texas town and inspired him to kneel before a black man and shine his shoes. Cathy said that “tears began to flow” when that young man told his story at a church service.
“So, I invite folks to just put some words to action here,” Cathy said as he stood up and walked over toward rapper Lecrae with a shoe brush in hand and knelt in front of him before brushing his shoes. “If we need to find somebody that needs to have their shoes shined, we just need to go right on over and shine their shoes, and whether they got tennis shoes on or not, maybe they got sandals on, it really doesn’t matter. But there’s a time at which we need to have, you know, some personal action here. Maybe we need to give them a hug, too.”
Cathy then held up his brush and said, “I bought about 1,500 of these, and I gave them to all of our Chick-fil-A operators and staff a number of years ago. And so any expressions of a contrite heart, of a sense of humility, a sense of shame, a sense of embarrassment, but yet with an apologetic heart, I think that’s what our world needs to hear today.”
Cathy’s appearance at the church comes as racial tensions in the United States have intensified after George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died while he was in police custody on May 25.
Chick-fil-A announced this week it is donating $5 million in grants to black nonprofit organizations.
“The recent highly publicized and horrific deaths of black men and women have rocked our nation and shed light on the injustice, systemic racism, and disparities that black people endure daily,” Rodney Bullard, vice president of corporate social responsibility for Chick-fil-A, said about the move. “As a company, we are making a pledge to take action against racial injustice. 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.”
