ROSA PARKS, THIS AIN’T: Portland bakery fires employees for denying black woman service after closing.

In one statement, “Back To Eden Bakery” says that according to its own surveillance video, a black woman named “Lillian”, who is well known in the area as a “professional equity activist”, entered at 9:06 p.m., after the bakery’s closing time. Employees had also turned off the “Open” sign, but several customers (all white) who had already ordered were still inside. Two other white women who went to the bakery two minutes before “Lillian,” and were also informed that the business was closed for the night.

The bakery says “Lillian” left the store briefly and began recording video.

The bakery’s statement says that even though it does not consider the employees to be racist and that they were following the business’s protocol of closing at 9 p.m., they were fired because “sometimes impact outweighs intent.” The bakery also says in the statement that the way the employees went about denying the woman service, “lacked sensitivity and understanding of the racial implications at work.”

In the statement “Back To Eden” says the employees were fired because the woman and the “clamoring public” demanded they be fired.

In one statement, the bakery admitted that the employees did not necessarily do anything wrong, “this is more about how a black woman was made to feel” at the business.”

I had a hard time believing a story this stupid actually happened, but it seems to check out.

UPDATE: The bakery owners seem to have modified their story a bit in a new Facebook post. They now claim that the fired workers served the two white women who came in slightly earlier, but only if they took their order “to go,” and that one employee was probationary, and the other had been warned about poor customer service in the past. That would make a certain amount of sense, and yet it doesn’t explain why the owners decided to scrub their earlier posts on the subject.