Starbucks Anti-Bias Training Day Leads to a Long To-Do List

Carla Ruffin, 57, spent essentially all of her working life wearing her hair straight, the kind of decision black women often make in order to fit in in the mostly white corporate world. She’s worked at Starbucks Corp. for 14 years and had been considering starting to wear her hair natural, but it wasn’t until Tuesday that she and her colleagues discussed the idea of doing so at work. “It represents freedom in embracing your ethnicity,” she said.

Natural hair was just one of a broad range topics that came up in the racial bias training session attended by Ruffin, ...