Posted on 03/20/2015 11:53:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
Starbucks is hoping to lead a national conversation about race. According to a video released by founder Howard Schultz, Starbucks baristas are encouraged to scrawl "race together" on coffee cups before placing them in the hands of customers. This hollow bit of moral exhibitionism is supposed to encourage "compassion," "honesty," "empathy" and "love." Does Starbucks sell caffeine-free compassion?
Each and every time we're hectored to engage in an "honest conversation" about race, it's a sham. What's wanted is not honesty, but confession of sin by white people and expressions of pain from blacks and others. Decade after decade, despite vastly diminishing levels of white racism (and the rapid growth of non-white populations), we are told that the old stain of racism continues to poison the lives of minorities. By encouraging that fiction, Starbucks is subtracting from racial understanding.
For what it's worth, here's my little contribution to the "honest conversation."
I spent preschool through third grade in mostly black Newark, N.J. My friends and my enemies were black. There were only three white students in my third-grade class. I remember deciding with one of my black friends that we were all "colored" -- some black, some white. We grinned at our brilliance in solving a vexed national question. Little did we anticipate that Starbucks would one day adopt this as a keen insight.
Our next-door neighbors were black, and their two little sons were about the cutest things you can imagine.
By the time I was 9, I had been beaten up on the way to school, nearly had my bicycle stolen out from under me by a much older girl (some punches were thrown), and had been chased through the park by a gang of boys. All of these assailants were black. So was my much-adored second-grade teacher.
I have always thought that my intimate experience of growing up in a mixed neighborhood in my early youth (we moved to a suburb when I was in fourth grade) inoculated me from thinking in stereotypes. Unlike many white people, I told myself, I had lived among blacks and accordingly saw them as individuals -- not heroes or villains, and not symbols.
But that's not complete. Want the truth? Despite my knowledge that blacks are just people -- good and bad, interesting and dull, trustworthy and deceptive -- I have nevertheless spent my whole life being nicer to blacks than to whites. If a black person makes a joke, I laugh harder than I would for a white person's joke. I hold open doors a fraction longer for blacks than whites. I'm more likely to use the honorific "sir" with a black store clerk than with a white.
I know a woman who adopted two children, one black and one white. Guess what? White strangers fuss and coo over the black child noticeably more than over the white one.
The same impulse that caused me to spend decades being particularly solicitous toward black people (and I very much doubt I'm the only one) has caused this country to move heaven and earth to try to repair the damage done by slavery, Jim Crow and racism. Our entire system of quotas and set-asides, our trillions of dollars in social programs, our "diversity" industry, our carefully designed entertainment and, yes, the election of Barack Hussein Obama all testify to how badly America yearns to prove its racial bona fides.
But for the race racketeers, the enormous racial recompense machine that is American life is as nothing. When an old-fashioned racist is discovered (of course they still exist), the press gaggle shouts choruses of "I told you so's." The exceptions are seized upon as the thinly veiled norm. They ache to believe that black problems, like higher rates of crime, poverty and joblessness, can be laid entirely at white people's feet. If coffee buyers can only transcend their unloving thoughts, the poor will thrive and peace will descend.
If Schultz truly wanted to alleviate the problems of black Americans -- and everyone else, as well -- he would do better to highlight the key role played by family structure. Only 2 percent of black children raised by their married parents are poor. Most young men who commit crimes are from fatherless homes. In fact, family structure is a far better predictor of poverty, criminality and a host of other troubles than race. More than 70 percent of black children are from single-parent homes.
Fifty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to have an honest conversation about the black family. He was shouted down.
We haven't had an honest conversation about race since.
Jenk is a long time FReeper.
“But for the race racketeers,....”
Good one, Mona.
No. Next question.
“Starbucks baristas are encouraged to scrawl “race together” on coffee cups before placing them in the hands of customers.”
I’ll bet that a 6’5” black guy will not have that scrawled on his coffee cup.
No, they want a lecture on race.
They're on their perch, trendy, elite, and know what's best for everyone else. But you know what? They've done nothing to adapt their formula so they could open stores in non-trendy inner city minority neighborhoods. That's the race conversation they should be having, if any. Let them go down to East 93rd and Harvard in Cleveland (etc in other cities) and work with the neighbors to develop a successful Starbucks there.
Otherwise, they should just SHUT UP!
If Starbucks was one bit honest about this race relations BS, they would locate in the highly self-segregated black communities.
But, times being what they are, nobody in those communities wants to pay maybe $8 for a not particularly inspired shot of caffeine.
There are 4 Starbucks locations in Detroit. 2 are downtown, one is in midtown and the 4th is at Wayne State. Not 1 is in the hood.
What they want is endless confessions by whites. Funny, the the black community never wants to move beyond the confession part to the “forgiveness” part, where the victim gives up any further demands for recompense, or amends, or reparations, which I thought was 40 acres and a mule well over one hundred years ago.
This is never going to be over so long as the black community refuses to forgive. I still don’t hear forgiveness being preached from the pulpits of black churches.
No. They don’t want an honest conversation. Every time a black person is shot by a law enforcement officer or a white person that becomes a racist issue. If a police officer or a white person gets killed or wounded, never an issue. Some want reparations-—also called redistribution of wealth. I am sick and tired of the guilt trip certain blacks want to push on white Americans. I am tired of living in the past. I am tired of spending money we don’t have on programs we cannot begin to afford, especially Obamacare. I’m tired of raising taxes on everyone else to pay for counterproductive welfare programs which do nothing but encourage dependence and irresponsibility. I’m tired of political correctness and worshipping at the altar of Dr. MLK Jr., a notorious philanderer who associated with Communists and radicals. I’m sick and tired all of it. Sorry can’t fit it all on a Starbucks coffee cup. The whole idea just typical liberal lunacy.
I am white so I must be a racist in this kind of society even though my grandfather was born in Amsterdam, my great grandmother was born in Ireland and the uncle that this white guy was Cherokee. Yep I am a racist./s
Phhtt! Starbucks is trying to cash in on a failed mulatto President.
He does not want the conversation. He just wants publicity for starbucks.
I think I would refuse to take a cup that had extraneous writing on it. Who knows what germs may have been added? Do you suppose they would relent on this campaign if it looked like they would be -OH NO- wasting paper?
Seriesly, this will not be a hugh problem for me, since I never go to Starbucks, but do find it offensive that they feel it is their public duty to spread the notion of white privilege and encourage white guilt amongst their, no-doubt, highly white, liberal customer base.
I stood at the register and just yelled “RACIST” at customers that ordered black coffee.
I won’t purchase anything after the ad they took out after the twin towers fell.
Google starbucks collapse into cool.
DISGUSTING.
read
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