Posted on 03/18/2015 7:08:33 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
When you go to your local Starbucks, you expect a few things – mediocre coffee at an exorbitant price, unnecessarily complicated drink orders and a plethora of laptop users deeply engaged in finally writing that novel they’ve had knocking around in their head since they first gave up on their hopes and dreams, switching their major from Romantic Literature in the Era of Feminism to Medical Billing. What you don’t expect to encounter is a deep, burgeoning discussion about race. Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz has announced a new initiative (can you really call anything done at a coffee shop an initiative?) aimed at sparking a national conversation about race.
Aside: I would like to propose a new initiative banning from public interaction anyone who ever again uses the phrase “National conversation about race.” I think that phrase should take its place in the trash bin of rhetorical history alongside “meme”, “gravitas” and “YOLO”. The initiative, titled “Race Together” places pamphlets discussing race issues inside Starbucks across the country and encourages (although does not force) Starbucks employees to engage customers in conversations about race. This gives me the giggles and the sads all at the same time. Here’s why: If I hear one more person call for a “national conversation about race” I’m going to need surgery to repair my eyes after they have frozen in a permanent state of Liz Lemon eye roll. We’ve been having a “national conversation about race” since I can remember. Bill Clinton had one – he even went so far as to set up townhalls across the country for his “national conversation about race”. Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, basically any talking head on MSNBC and every single Hollywood “it” girl of the day. There is no lack of people calling for a “national conversation.” In fact, there are too many people doing it. How many conversations are we supposed to have about this? When the same issues are brought up over and over again in marriage, that’s called nagging. It also happens to be identified as one of the biggest causes of tension and communication breakdown in a relationship. Too much nagging and the other party begins to shut down and simply tune out. It could be argued that this incessant national conversation about race we keep being forced to have (but never really have) is the very thing preventing us from properly addressing the problems of racial unity. I don’t even like telling the Starbucks baristas my name for my drink order as I feel that is already revealing way to much about myself to a total stranger. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to stand there waiting for my latte while my barista asks my opinion about the intricacies of interracial relationships in modern America. Which brings me to another quandary – just how in the hell is this “conversation” supposed to get started by said barista? The very initiation of the conversation would first require all kinds of assumptions to be made about the customer, starting with the assumption that they even want to be talking about racism with a coffee server in the first place. What does that even look like? “Here’s your latte, Miss. Shall we put that on your Race Card”?… “Here’s your large decaf, sir. Would you mind setting aside your white privilege for a moment while I give this to that brown person in line behind you”? I don’t understand what this is supposed to look like. image: http://louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/StarbucksCup-579x1024.jpg StarbucksCup This whole idea seems not only ludicrous but impossible to implement without causing more offense to customers, not less. Sometimes, most times actually, I don’t wish to be seen as a person who has to walk around with the weight of an entire nation’s racial sins on my shoulders. I would just like to be seen as an American woman who wants her tall, soy, double-shot, sugar-free, caramel latte with just the right amount of foam and wants it as quickly as possible. Yes, my name is Kira. No, I don’t care how you spell it. And if you ask me how I feel about the violence in Ferguson I will turn over this stand filled with iTunes codes for free Trivia Crack and Taylor Swift CDs … and never come back.
Irony of the chief putting on us a “racism monitoring device” for sake of peace. There is a fine line between growing to know people and hating oneself for failing as a Stat Buck “customer/worker”. How is the device callibered? And who is the callibrator?
If people behaved and were somewaphat scientific as opposed to gay emotional like in preferences, maybe this whole thing of race and “human equality” would not be a problem. This stuff reeks of redistributionism and using equality as a word, indeed, to prevent anyone questioning the “superiority” of the NOW COW... a sort of established ranking system having precedence over true judgment of quality and history.
This in effect is essentially a spun out racist system. Much like it would be offensive for a biggot to imply that only blacks should be gay, nowadays we say it is offensive to tell a black not to be gay! In the same hypocrite PC Dr. Spock politics having replaced real discipline, Star Bucks is simply saying to accomodate people for their own personal racial sensitivities in spoiling ways, inherently prostituting the Star Bucks worker to make the customer pay for the crappy product by removing self introspection.
We have here again gross greed and profit making from the dead or dying, motivating illegal immigration, crime and self destructive misbehavior after taking their moneys,
Speaking of NOW COW, there was this anchor woman interviewing a mathematician and she seemed pretty proud that she knew nothing about math yet was an empowered woman nonetheless, capable of asking or extracting answers about what math researchers do. But then she asked him in threatening/inquisitive manner as to why very few women study math, as if it was his fault for not allowing women in.
So baiscally she is the one inciting an ignorant racist empowered form of womanhood, no matter her intelligence or work, spoiling women, yet she accuses him implicitly of being the cause of this unjustice, not doing enough.
Surprizingly he replied somewhat ambiguously. (ie. He plaid the teacher who lets students cheat so as to set them up for failure.) He simply said that when schools were gender segregated, there simply were more women doing math because they had a woman-only classrooms. In effect, because of co-ed, there simply was no incentive anymore to use the stick on women in order to perform in research domain, in order to fill the classrooms, and they were relegated to rely on the guy.
So, he never went directly about her stupid Alinsky like attack, he simply oriented her back to the narcissist circular/loop argument about gender accomodation issues.
You must be kidding. There are loads of liberal men; now, and down through history: Soviet communism, Chinese communism, Cambodian, national socialists in Germany, the left in the United States, I could go on and on...
You know what was good about Cotton’s letter to Iran? It was relatively short, to the point, and it had paragraphs in it.
it’s a burned-tasting coffee desert.
I have an idea!
Lets get to the point where no one cares about skin color by focusing every waking moment on skin color!
Seriously, that’s how backward this whole thing is.
I was saying it in gist and being sarcastic.
Look at the land scape of liberal men, think about it.
On a broader scope we have been indoctrinated by the lie that liberals are for the poor people, but if anyone were to actually open their eyes and look at white liberal leaders, celebrities, politicians ?
They are snobby, snarky, arrogant rich folk, with a elitist , preveliged, superior attitude.
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