Papa John’s founder John Schnatter has resigned from his position at Papa John’s

Papa John’s founder John Schnatter has resigned from his position at Papa John’s

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky -Papa John’s founder John Schnatter has seen massive fallout from a racial slur he uttered on a call with the company’s marketing agency.

He told WLKY that the agency tried to blackmail him to bury the story.

“They said, you know we’ve got this issue. In fact, they even said if you don’t…they wanted $6 million to make it go away. I’m like, I’m not paying you $6 million. And they made it pretty clear that if… the words were ‘If I don’t get my (bleep) money, I’m going to bury the founder’ said one of the executives. So, I’m not for sale. They can take the $6 million and whatever, they’re not getting it. So, yeah they tried to extort us and we held firm,” Schnatter said. “They took what I said and they ran to Forbes and Forbes printed it and it went viral.”

Schnatter told WLKY that the marketing

agency wanted Papa John’s to add a well-known rapper to its advertising campaign to negate damage from the NFL kneeling controversy.

Last fall, Schnatter claimed in an earnings conference call that the kneeling controversy hurt profits.

Papa John's Pizza founder John Schnatter

“It wasn’t a slur. It was a social strategy and media planning and training and I repeated something that somebody else said and said we’re not going to say that. We don’t use that kind of language or vocabulary and sure it got taken out of context and sure it got twisted, but that doesn’t matter. I hurt people’s feelings. That’s what matters here. And for that, I’m sorry and I’m disappointed in myself that something like that could happen,” he said.

Schnatter has resigned from his position at Papa John’s and gave up his seat on University of Louisville’s Board of Trustees, which he served on for the last two years.

The school announced Friday it was removing the Papa John’s name from the football stadium.

As president of an organization that has trained thousands of people in diversity and cultural competence, I am all too familiar with the racism displayed by John Schnatter, founder and chairman of Papa John’s Pizza, who resigned after using a racial slur on a company call. Like many public figures who find themselves in similar situations, he initially apologized and tried to present himself as a person free of prejudice.

Schnatter could have taken a lesson from Starbucks, which responded to a racist incident by admitting there was a problem and holding a company-wide anti-bias training. Such training, when done right, can weaken conscious and unconscious prejudices — and help people to have more empathy and respect for each other.

Last year, Schnatter criticized the NFL players who have been protesting the ill treatment of African Americans by police officers. Regardless of whether he believes that taking a knee during the national anthem is an appropriate or effective way to correct this injustice, he demonstrated a lack of concern for the problem. He compounded his callousness by using the “N” word during a company call and assumed it was okay, because he was quoting someone else.

Every ethnic group has a stereotype

Like many people, Schnatter is most likely lying to himself and honestly feels that he is not racist. Project Implicit, a collaboration of researchers at Harvard and other universities, has shown that most people, both white and black, have an unconscious bias against African Americans, and they deny that bias, even to themselves. This does not include those people who are overtly prejudiced and proud of it.

Addressing unconscious bias requires a willingness to acknowledge the truth, which can be encouraged through effective training. This may be what Starbucks was attempting to do, however, I believe their training placed too much emphasis on assigning blame for social inequities.

In my trainings, I assert that everyone in the room is prejudiced against some group of people based on race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexual orientation, gender identity, accent, body type, physical presentation (grooming, dress, tattoos, etc.) or other factors. I explain that “prejudice” is about pre-judging people before you know them, often based on stereotypes. I encourage everyone to identify stereotypes associated with a group they belong to. 

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