NEW YORK (AP) — Opponents of workplace diversity programs are increasingly banking on a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to challenge equity policies as well as funding to minority-owned businesses.

Section 1981 of the act was originally meant to protect formerly enslaved people — or Black people specifically — from economic exclusion. But now the American Alliance for Equal Rights — a group run by Edward Blum, the conservative activist who challenged affirmative action in higher education and won — is citing the section to go after a venture capital fund called the Fearless Fund, which invests in businesses owned by women of color. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked funding for Fearless Fund’s grant program as the case proceeds.

Conservative activists have brought lawsuits using the 1981 section against other companies and institutions, including insurance company Progressive and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The cases are being monitored carefully as the battle over racial considerations shift to the workplace following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions.

While the 1981 statute had been used well before the latest affirmative action ruling to prove reverse discrimination, Alphonso David, Fearless Fund’s legal counsel who serves as president & CEO of The Global Black Economic Forum, said that there’s a “coordinated use of Section 1981 now that we did not see before.”

Here’s what’s happening and what the impact could be:

What is Section 1981?

The 1866 Civil Rights Act is a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, and ethnicity when making and enforcing contracts. Section 1981 specifically grants all individuals within the U.S. jurisdiction the same rights and benefits as “enjoyed by white citizens” regarding contractual relationships.

However, the Supreme Court’s 1976 McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation decision broadened those protections, ruling Section 1981 prohibits racial discrimination in private employment against white people as well as people of color.

“It’s a very clever game plan,” said Randolph McLaughlin, a civil rights attorney and law professor at Pace University, referring to the use of the 1866 law. “They want to turn civil rights law upside down.”

The standard of proof for the 1981 section is high. That’s because of the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Comcast v. National Association of African American-owned Media establishing that the plaintiff who sues for racial discrimination under the section bears the burden of showing that race was the central cause in denying a contract opportunity — as opposed to merely a motivating factor.

Why not rely on Title VII instead?

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. If the plaintiff opts to sue via Title VII, then he or she needs to file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That’s a process that takes up to 180 days. After that, the plaintiff can file a lawsuit. Choosing the 1981 route is much quicker.

Section 1981 is also broader than Title VII, which generally applies to employers who have 15 or more employees, legal experts said. Also under Title VII, a plaintiff can recoup only up to $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages total. Section 1981 has no limitation.

Title VII does have a lower standard of proof than Section 1981. Plaintiffs only have to show race was a motivating factor, not a central cause.

Why is the case against the Fearless Fund potentially significant?

In its lawsuit, American Alliance For Equal Rights seeks relief by arguing that the fund’s Fearless Strivers Grant Contest, which awards $20,000 to Black women who run businesses, violates Section 1981 by excluding some people from the program because of their race.

Attorneys for the Fearless Fund have argued in court filings that the grants are donations, not contracts, and are protected by the First Amendment.

David, the Fearless Fund’s legal counsel, says that if these types of grants are considered contracts, one can make the argument that grants issued in many other forms and contexts could also be considered contracts.

“Think of every foundation out there that issues grants,” David said. “They issue grants to people of different demographic groups. They issue grants only to women. They issue grants to survivors of earthquakes. Are those all contracts?”

Angela Reddock-Wright, an employment and Title IX attorney and mediator based in Los Angeles, believes it is “very possible” that the case could end up at the Supreme Court.

“Ideally, the court would decline to hear this matter on the grounds that Section 1981 was not intended to cover matters such as this, but this court appears to operate under different rules and standards,” she said.

What impact have similar lawsuits had?

Some companies have already changed their criteria for their diversity fellowship programs.

Law firms Morrison Foerster and Perkins Coie opened their diversity fellowship programs to all applicants of all races in October, changes the companies said were in the works before Blum filed lawsuits against them. He subsequently dropped them. Previously, the programs for first year law students had targeted students in historically underrepresented groups.

Morrison Foerster’s fellowship program now caters to students with demonstrated commitments to equity and diversity. Perkins Coie announced that it had opened its fellowship programs to all applicants, regardless of their race, gender or LGBTQ identity. In a statement, Perkins Coie said the changes arose as part of updates to its diversity and inclusion policies following the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action.

Last February, Pfizer dropped race-based eligibility requirements for a fellowship program designed for college students of Black, Latino and Native American descent. A judge had dismissed a lawsuit filed by the conservative nonprofit Do No Harm, which claimed Pfizer’s program violated Section 1981, but Do No Harm is appealing the ruling.

“What would work in (companies’) favor is to lower their profile,” said University of Virginia’s Distinguished Professor of Law George Rutherglen. “Which means they do not explicitly consider race in making these decisions. Look to other conditions and requirements that might achieve the same objective.”

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For months, most employers relied on information campaigns, bonuses and other incentives to encourage their workforces to get the COVID-19 shot. Now, a growing number are imposing rules to make it more onerous for employees to refuse, from outright mandates to requiring the unvaccinated to undergo regular testing.

Among employers getting tougher are the federal government, the state governments of California and New York, tech giants Google and Facebook, the Walt Disney Co. and the NFL. Some hospitals, universities, restaurants, bars and other entertainment venues have also started requiring vaccines.

But the new measures are unlikely to affect many of the millions of unvaccinated Americans.

Many of the companies that are requiring shots have mostly office workers who are already largely vaccinated and are reluctant to work alongside those who aren’t.

In contrast, major companies that rely on low-income blue-collar workers — food manufacturers, warehouses, supermarkets and other store chains — are shying away from mandates for fear of driving away employees and worsening the labor shortages such businesses are facing.

Tyson Foods, for instance, said about half of its U.S. workforce — 56,000 employees — has received shots after the meat and poultry processor hosted more than 100 vaccination events since February. But the company said it has no plans to impose a mandate to reach the other half.

Walmart and Amazon, the country’s two largest private employers, have also declined to require its hourly workers to get vaccinated, continuing to rely on strategies such as bonuses and onsite access to shots. But in a potentially powerful signal, Walmart said employees at its headquarters will be required to get vaccinated by Oct. 4.

The biggest precedent so far has come from the federal government, the nation’s largest employer. President Joe Biden announced last week that all federal employees and contractors must get vaccinated or put up with weekly testing and lose privileges such as official travel.

The federal government has said it will cover the costs of the weekly tests. As for other employers, insurance may pay for such testing at some workplaces but not others.

Biden’s decision could embolden other employers by signaling they would be on solid legal ground to impose similar rules, said Brian Kropp, chief of research at consulting firm Gartner’s human resources practice.

But Kropp said some companies face complicated considerations that go beyond legalities, including deep resistance to vaccines in many states where they operate.

Retailers like Walmart might have a hard time justifying vaccine requirements for their workers while allowing shoppers to remain unvaccinated, Kropp added. Stores have mostly avoided vaccine requirements for customers for fear of alienating them and because of the difficulty in trying to verify their status.

In surveys by Gartner, fewer than 10% of employers have said they intend to require all employees to be vaccinated.

But a shift is building amid frustration over plateauing vaccination rates and alarm over the spread of the more contagious delta variant.

On Monday, the U.S. finally reached Biden’s goal of dispensing at least one shot to 70% of American adults — but a month late and amid a fierce surge that is driving hospital caseloads in some places to their highest levels since the outbreak began. The president had hoped to reach his target by the Fourth of July.

The Union Square Hospitality Group, a group of New York City restaurants and bars founded by Danny Meyer, is now requiring employees and customers to be vaccinated by Sept. 7.

The San Francisco Bar Owner Alliance, a group of about 300 bars, made a similar decision following a meeting where “the thing that stood out was anger and frustration” toward vaccine holdouts, said founder Ben Bleiman.

While some companies fear vaccine mandates will drive workers away, the pandemic itself is also causing absenteeism. Bleiman said he recently had to close his bar for a night after his bartender, who was fully vaccinated, tested positive and a replacement couldn’t be found.

Some employers are concluding that requiring vaccines is simpler than trying to come up with different rules on masks and social distancing for the small number of unvaccinated employees.

BlackRock, the global investment manager, is allowing only vaccinated workers into its U.S. offices for now and said people will be free to go maskless, as local health guidelines allow, and sit next to each other and congregate without restrictions. The firm said 85% of its U.S. employees are vaccinated or in the process of getting shots.

Matthew Putman, CEO of New York-based high-tech manufacturing hub Nanotronics, said he agonized over his decision to impose a vaccine mandate on his more than 100 employees. As it turned out, nearly all of them were already vaccinated, though he dreads the prospect of having to fire any holdouts.

“I hate the thought. But if it has to happen it has to happen,” Putman said. “I lost a ton of sleep over this but not as much sleep as I’ve lost over the fear of infection.”

Other mandates could provide a clearer test of the potential for employee backlash.

Hospitals and nursing home chains, for instance, are increasingly requiring the vaccine. So far, such mandates have survived legal challenges. More than 150 employees at a Houston hospital system who refused to get the COVID-19 shot were fired or resigned after a judge dismissed an employee lawsuit over the requirement.

Atria Senior Living, which operates more than 200 senior living communities across the country, was among the first to mandate vaccines for its staff in January.

It worked. Nearly 99% of Atria’s 10,000 employees are vaccinated, and only a tiny fraction quit over the requirement, said CEO and Chairman John Moore.

“Our residents deserve to live in a vaccinated environment. Our staff deserves to work in a vaccinated environment,” Moore said.

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Unemployment benefits for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet lapsed overnight as President Donald Trump refused to sign an end-of-year COVID relief and spending bill that had been considered a done deal before his sudden objections.

The fate of the bipartisan package remained in limbo Sunday as Trump continued to demand larger COVID relief checks and complained about “pork” spending. Without the widespread funding provided by the massive measure, a government shutdown would occur when money runs out at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

“It’s a chess game and we are pawns,” said Lanetris Haines, a self-employed single mother of three in South Bend, Indiana, who stood to lose her $129 weekly jobless benefit unless Trump signed the package into law or succeeded in his improbable quest for changes.

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 JPMorgan Chase said Thursday it will extend billions in loans to Black and Latino homebuyers and small business owners in an expanded effort toward fixing what the bank calls “systemic racism” in the country’s economic system.

The New York bank said it is committing $30 billion over the next five years toward programs that include earmarking more money for getting Black and Latino families into homeownership and providing additional financing to build affordable rental housing units.

“Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history,” said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in a statement. “We can do more and do better to break down systems that have propagated racism and widespread economic inequality.”

In the immediate aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd, JPMorgan announced a commitment of $1.75 billion toward programs they said would help address racial inequalities. But since then, as protests have remained constant in some urban centers, there has been a push for banks to do more.

Citigroup announced last month it is committing $1 billion toward closing “the racial wealth gap” in the United States, including $550 million toward homeownership programs for racial minorities.

JPMorgan, which has $3.2 trillion in assets, said it expects the $30 billion to help finance 40,000 additional mortgages for Black and Latino households, another 20,000 loans that will refinance mortgages and help construct 100,000 affordable rental units. Additional funds will go to finance 15,000 small business loans to Black and Latino-owned businesses.

There will also be programs to place 1 million customers in low-cost checking and savings accounts, partly by opening new branches in minority-majority neighborhoods.

Black households are several times more likely to be what is known as unbanked, meaning they do not have a primary checking account with a traditional bank, or underbanked, where households still rely on high-cost financial services like check cashing, pawn shops and payday loans.

American banking still has a long way to go to fix the problems of the past. Banks large and small are still regularly cited for discriminatory practices, including allegations of “redlining” Black homebuyers. Redlining is a practice in which banks deny or avoid providing credit services to consumers because of racial demographics or the neighborhood where they live.

Ed Golding, the executive director of the MIT Golub Center for Finance Policy, said JPMorgan’s investment is impressive but narrowing the gap requires more fundamental changes to the financial system. He noted that there’s a 30% gap between Black and white homeownership, amounting to about 4.5 million households. JPMorgan’s investment would go to a fraction of those.

“We are not going to do it overnight,” said Golding, who served as the head of the Federal Housing Administration under the Obama administration. “I applaud the energy and the direction but it’s going to take massive government policy changes to really move the needle and make up for hundreds of years of systemic racism.”

According to a recent study that Golding co-authored, African Americans on average pay higher mortgage interest payments, insurance premiums and property taxes than white families, adding an average of $67,320 to their homeownership costs. The study said Black families are disadvantaged by a risk-based pricing system, which charges higher mortgage rates for lower down payments and credit scores. Golding called for a system that would pool risk among borrowers.

The Black Lives Matter protests have pushed dozens of companies to announce initiatives and policies to fight racial inequities, from pledges to bring more African Americans into leadership roles, to new investments intended to promote Black owned businesses.

JPMorgan was one of 27 major New York-based companies that joined a program to recruit 100,000 workers from the city’s low-income, predominately Black, Latino and Asian communities over the next 10 years. Mastercard announced a $500 million investment last month in Black communities, including providing Black-owned businesses access to affordable capital. IBM is investing $100 million in technology education at historically Black universities.

Stephanie Creary, an assistant professor of management at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said many of the programs appear promising because they are strategically targeted.

“That’s when I get excited is when it’s targeted toward something very concrete and that they are not just throwing money at the problem and hoping that people on the other side will figure out what to do with it,” said Creary, who researches diversity and inclusion issues.

But she said the question remains whether companies will continue investing in minority communities at this scale beyond this year.

“We’ve never seen this type of corporate response before and it feels a little hard to trust that it’s going to be long-term,” Creary said. “It feels like a window of opportunity, and right now corporations are paying attention, but one would hope that it becomes an annual moment.”

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As America tentatively emerges from weeks of lockdowns, it is becoming clear that the pandemic has taken its toll on workers who have been on the front lines all along.

They have been packing and delivering supplies, caring for the sick and elderly, and keeping streets and buildings clean.

They have also watched their co-workers fall ill. Thousands have gotten sick themselves. Many have died.

The burden has been borne unevenly across gender, racial and socioeconomic lines, according to an Associated Press analysis of census data in the country’s 100 largest cities. They are mostly women, people of color and more likely to be immigrants.

Workers deemed “essential” are also more likely to live below the federal poverty line or hover just above it. They are more likely to have children at home, and many live with others who also have front-line jobs.

“What is important about this pandemic is that it has shined a spotlight on workers who have always been essential but before this were invisible,” said David Michaels, professor of environmental and occupational health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

A look at these workers:

THE WAREHOUSE WORKER

Born homeless in New York City, Courtenay Brown is no stranger to hardship.

She and her youngest sister both work an Amazon Fresh warehouse in New Jersey and share an apartment in Newark with six cats and a turtle. The sisters fought for their stable life, at one point living in Brown’s car for weeks until they saved enough for a security deposit and first month’s rent.

When the pandemic took hold, Brown plunged into her job as a supervisor in the loading dock to get the $2 hourly pay bump and double overtime. Soon, several of her co-workers became infected. Others, she said, didn’t show up.

More than 60% of warehouse and delivery workers in most cities are people of color, a figure that rises to more than 95% in Newark.

One tough day, Brown pleaded with a co-worker to come back to work for a day. The next day, exhausted and limping because of tendinitis, Brown couldn’t bear to come in herself. Her phone rang repeatedly that morning. She threw it across the room.

“I thought, ‘this just isn’t worth it,’” she said.

THE GROCERY STORE WORKER

Jane St. Louis knows many of her customers after 27 years at a Safeway in Damascus, Maryland. Some have brought her cookies. Others have taken out their own fears of the virus on her, including one woman who yelled at her for not wearing gloves.

Grocery employees have been among the most visible of America’s front-line workers as people rush to stock up on essentials. Nationwide, they are among the more diverse of front-line workers, split evenly between men and women. In most cities, more than 40% are white, 15% are black and 14% are Hispanic. At least 16% live below the federal poverty line and 15% lack health insurance.

The virus has killed at least 30 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Another 3,000 have either fallen ill or been quarantined for exposure, according to the union, which represents 900,000 people.

When St. Louis gets home, her routine takes about an hour and starts in the garage, where she removes her shoes and changes into a bathrobe. She sprays the shoes with Lysol. The clothes go in the washing machine, as does her bathrobe after her shower.

She doesn’t want to risk infecting her husband, a construction worker, and 15-year-old granddaughter, who lives with them.

“I didn’t know I had anxiety until this started,” St. Louis said.

THE TRUCK DRIVER

Juan Giraldo and his wife nearly lost their home after he was laid off in the 2008 financial crisis. A refinancing deal saved him from foreclosure but left him tens of thousands of dollars deeper in debt.

Now he feels he is sinking back into a familiar nightmare. A contract port truck driver in Los Angeles, Giraldo has seen work dry up as imports slow. He gets fewer than four hauls a week, compared with at least 12 in normal times. He used to make up to $3,500 a month but now earns about $1,500.

More than 85% of warehouse and delivery workers in the Los Angeles area are people of color and 53% are foreign-born.

Giraldo was raised in Colombia by his grandparents after his father left the war-torn country to work in the fruit groves of California. Giraldo followed in his early 20s, grateful to his father for paving the way but determined to be the kind of parent he never had.

“I’m trying to change our history,” he said.

As a contract worker, the father of four gets no paid sick leave and relies on California’s state health insurance program.

“They are calling us heroes but it’s like they are sending us to World War II with wooden pistols,” Giraldo said.

THE JANITOR

Annette Brown’s job had been source of stability in a difficult life.

For six years, the single mother of two has worked the overnight shift cleaning the second floor of a hospital in Halethorpe, Maryland.

The outbreak has made her routine even tougher. She leaves her Baltimore apartment three hours before her shift starts and takes two buses. In the morning, she gets her 8-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son ready for remote schooling, cooks dinner and gets a few hours of sleep before starting over.

The unionized job offers her paid sick days, a yearly raise and health insurance — a luxury in an industry where nearly 30% of workers lack it.

She just never banked on finding herself working in a pandemic battleground. The hospital now treats COVID-19 patients, and Brown is terrified of going to her $14.70-an-hour job that barely keeps her family above the poverty line.

“People are dropping like flies, and I don’t want it to happen to my family,” she said.

Janitors are the most financially vulnerable front-line workers. In most cities, more than a quarter live below the poverty line. More than 40% are foreign-born and 74% are people of color.

In Baltimore, nearly 75% of them are black. At least 90 members of Brown’s union, 32BJ SEIU, have died of the coronavirus. Another 20,000 have been laid off.

Brown’s son tells her not to be afraid, saying: “Fear is nothing but the devil.”

THE HEALTH CARE WORKER

Linda Silva knew something was wrong when she started coughing on a Saturday in late March. The next day, the nurse’s assistant woke up with chest pain, a fever, a headache and a backache so bad it reminded her of labor pain. She tested positive for COVID-19 a week later.

“That was before we realized we actually had COVID cases in our nursing home,” said Silva, who works at the Queens Nassau Nursing Center and the Beacon Rehab and Nursing Center in New York. “We didn’t have the right personal protective equipment at first.”

About 75% of health care workers in most cities are women. They are among the front-line workers most likely to have access to health insurance, although 7% lack it. And more than 8% live below the federal poverty line.

In New York City, more than 76% of health care workers are people of color.

At least 54 nurses have died of the coronavirus, according to the American Nurses Association.

Silva returned to work after recovering. It’s been more than a month since she has hugged her two sons or her husband, who is a building fire safety director.

“We say we love each other daily and put our arms around our own selves in front of each other,” she said.

THE TRAIN CONDUCTOR

Desmond Hill is a music writer who plays the flugelhorn, but he makes his living as a New York City subway conductor.

His partner and five others he knows were among the more than 3,000 bus and subway workers who tested positive. Another 3,500, including Hill, were put on 14-day quarantine for exposure. Nearly 6,000 have returned to work.

At least 83 New York City transit workers have died of the virus, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

In New York City, more than 45% of transit workers are black, 20% are white and 24% are Hispanic.

“Sometimes you’re looking out on a train and think, ’who am I moving right now? I’m moving homeless people back and forth, why am I out here doing this?’” said Hill, who is back at work.

Other times, Hill feels a sense of purpose.

“There are also days you can see essential workers, people going to work at grocery stores, Target, hospitals. Those people get off the train and thank you,” he said. “It’s a back-and-forth struggle.”

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Black Friday enthusiasts woke up before dawn and traveled cross-state to their favorite malls in search of hot deals, kicking off a shortened shopping season that intensified the scramble between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But the ever-growing popularity of online shopping and holiday discounts that started weeks earlier dampened the frenzy. This year, more people got a head start on gift-hunting, lured by deals from retailers trying to compensate for the shorter season.

The shopping season is the shortest since 2013 because Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday in November — the latest possible date it could be.

Shoppers up since the wee hours slept in chairs at Nashville’s Opry Mills mall, known for its outlet stores. Outside, deal-seekers were still fighting for parking spots by midmorning.

Haley Wright left Alabama at 4 a.m. to arrive at the Tennessee mall by 7 a.m. She makes the annual trip because she says the stores offer better deals and a more fun environment than the shops back home.

“I let my husband do the online shopping; I do Black Friday,” she said.

The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, baked the shorter season into its forecast, but it says the real drivers will be the job market. It forecasts that holiday sales will rise between 3.8 percent and 4.2 percent, an increase from the disappointing 2.1 percent growth in the November and December 2018 period that came well short of the group’s prediction.

NRF expects online and catalog sales, which are included in the total, to increase between 11% and 14% for the holiday period.

Last year’s holiday sales were hurt by turmoil over the White House trade policy with China and a delay of nearly a month in data collection because of a government shutdown.

Marshal Cohen, the chief industry analyst at market research firm NPD Group Inc., says he doesn’t believe a shorter season will affect overall sales, but early discounts will likely diminish Black Friday’s impact. In terms of the busiest day of the year, it will be a toss-up between Black Friday and the last Saturday before Christmas.

“We still have the same amount of money to spend regardless of whether the season is longer or shorter,” he said.

More than half of consumers started their holiday shopping early this year, and nearly a quarter of purchases have already been made, according to the annual survey released by the NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics.

Kara Lopez and Jeremy Samora arrived at Denver’s Cherry Creek Shopping Center as soon as it opened Friday to snag deals on candles and lotions at Bath & Body Works.

A half-hour later, they sat with their purchases sharing a thermos of hot chocolate, a tradition Lopez started years ago when she had to wait in line for the store to open and the first shoppers inside got gifts like stuffed animals. It’s more relaxed these days, but Lopez likes it that way.

“I like the mall but not when it’s full of people,” she said.

Adobe Analytics predicts a loss of $1 billion in online revenue from a shortened season. Still, it expects online sales will reach $143.7 billion, up 14.1 percent from last year’s holiday season.

Adobe Analytics said Thanksgiving Day set records for online shopping. Consumers spent $4.2 billion on Thanksgiving, a 14.5 percent increase from the holiday a year ago. Black Friday was on track to hit $7.4 billion.

As online sales surged, some retailers including Costco.com and H&M grappled with brief outages, according to technology company Catchpoint.

Target reported Friday that 1 million more customers used its app to shop Black Friday deals compared with last year. The discounter said customers bought big-ticket items like TVs, Apple iPads and Apple Watches.

Walmart worked to ease long lines with technology allowing shoppers to check out with sales associates in the aisles. The retail giant said its most popular deals included TVs, Apple AirPods and “Frozen” toys.

In Europe, though, Black Friday drew a backlash from activists, politicians and even consumers who criticized the U.S. shopping phenomenon as capitalism run amok. Climate demonstrators blocked a shopping mall near Paris and gathered in front of Amazon’s headquarters. Workers at Amazon in Germany went on strike for better pay. Some French lawmakers called for banning Black Friday altogether.

In the U.S., attention Friday turned to malls, which are fighting for traffic as online shopping grows.

At Mall of America, the country’s largest shopping mall, crowds were expected to exceed the 240,000 count on Black Friday from a year ago, said Jill Renslow, senior vice president at the Bloomington, Minnesota-based mall.

Maria Mainville, a spokesman at Taubman Centers, which operates a little over 20 malls in the U.S., says that its centers reported strong customer traffic since earlier this week. That’s different from last year when Black Friday and Thanksgiving drew the majority of the crowds for the period.

At some malls, some shoppers were surprised at the relatively thin crowds.

Two Bath & Body Works saleswomen wearing reindeer antler headbands shouted about promotions at a trickle of shoppers walking through Newport Centre in Jersey City, New Jersey.

“It looks empty for Black Friday,” said Latoya Robinson, a student who lives in New York and planned to stop by Forever 21 and Macy’s to shop for herself.

In Kansas, Kassi Adams and her husband drove 50 miles (80 kilometers) to Town East Mall in Wichita, even though the couple was nearly done with their holiday shopping. They were surprised to see how few people were there and even boasted about getting a choice parking spot.

“There is really not much of a crowd to fight,” she said.

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Three years ago, Starbucks was widely ridiculed for trying to start a national conversation on race relations by asking its employees to write the words “Race Together” on coffee cups. The initiative, though it backfired, was in line with the company’s longstanding effort to project a progressive and inclusive image.

The company is now through the looking glass, trying to tamp down a racially charged uproar over the arrest of two black men at one of its stores in Philadelphia. How could Starbucks, which once urged its employees to start conversations about race with customers, now be under fire for its treatment of black people?

The episode highlights the risks large corporations run when they tie their brands so closely to social messaging. In 2015, then-CEO Howard Schultz shrugged off the “Race Together” fiasco as a well-intentioned mistake and pressed on with his public efforts to engage in the debate over race in America. His successor, Kevin Johnson, is now scrambling to keep the Philadelphia incident from shattering the message Schultz was going for: Starbucks is a corporation that stands for something beyond profit.

“The more your brand is trying to connect emotionally to people, the more hurt people feel when these kinds of things happen,” said Jacinta Gauda, the head of the Gauda Group, a New York strategic communications firm affiliated with the Grayling network. “They are breaking a promise. That’s what makes it hurt deeper.”

Beyond racial relations, Starbucks has staked much of its brand on its dual promise of providing good customer service and treating its employees well, said John Gordon, a restaurant industry analyst with Pacific Management Consulting Group. The Seattle company has a reputation for well-managed stores, “a point of difference that allows them to sell primarily drinks and coffees that have a higher cost,” he said.

But in a multinational company with more than 28,000 stores worldwide, there has “to be a situation every day where some human being handles things wrong. You can’t have that many employees and not have something stupid happen,” Gordon said. “Even with a huge operations manual that lays out what to say and what to do, you can’t cover everything.”

Still, Starbucks has set its own high bar.

Last month, the company claimed it had achieved 100 percent pay equity across gender and race for all its U.S. employees and committed to doing the same for its overseas operations, an initiative publicly backed by equality activist Billie Jean King. The company also touts the diversity of its workforce, saying minorities comprise more than 40 percent of its employees in the U.S.

In 2016, Starbucks promised to invest in 15 “underserved” communities across the country, trying to counter an image of a company catering to a mostly white clientele. One of those stores opened in Ferguson, Missouri, the scene of the 2014 protests that erupted following the police shooting of Michael Brown, one of several such killings that moved Schultz to launch the Race Together campaign.

Those efforts are in stark contrast to the video that went viral over the weekend showing the two black men being arrested by police who were called by an employee. Officials have said police officers were told the men had asked to use the store’s restroom but were denied because they hadn’t bought anything and they refused to leave. A Starbucks spokeswoman said Tuesday that the employee no longer works at the store, but declined to give further details.

On Monday, about two dozen protesters took over the Philadelphia shop, chanting slogans like, “A whole lot of racism, a whole lot of crap, Starbucks coffee is anti-black.” The hashtag (hash)BoycottStarbucks trended on Twitter.

Johnson, who called has called the arrests “reprehensible,” arrived in Philadelphia this weekend to personally confront the crisis. He met with the two men Monday, the company’s spokeswoman said. Johnson also promised to revamp store management training to include “unconscious-bias” training.

“I watched the video, which was hard to watch. That is not what Starbucks is about. That is not representative of our mission, our values and our guiding principles,” Johnson said.

Gauda, who has developed workplace inclusion and diversity strategies for corporate clients, cautioned that any unconscious-bias training should not be treated as “special subject” but incorporated as a core part of its employee training. She warned Starbucks against treating Philadelphia as a one-off affair, urging the company to investigate whether there were any warning signs.

“I would suspect that this particular issue is something that has occurred before,” Gauda said. “The company is in crisis mode now, but they should not look at this as an isolated issue.”

Gauda and other corporate communications experts said they were impressed that Johnson immediately took a hands-on approach to addressing the crisis, saying his efforts would pay off in an age where corporations are under the glare of social media.

“I’m actually surprised he is handling it the way a CEO should be handling it. He went in head first and he took the blame for it,” said M.J. McCallum, vice president and creative director of Muse Communications, an advertising and communications agency with an African-American focus. “I definitely applaud that. Most people won’t jump on the bomb.”

“Starbucks has a great reputation. They stand for a better culture. They have stores in inner cities,” McCallum said. “I think he realizes what this one incident can do for his brand.”

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