Black People Don’t Drink Coffee
23rd March 2015
Jim Goad examines the dark underbelly of the coffee problem.
Since this article is about the intersection of race and coffee, is there truly a whiter brand of coffee than Starbucks? I mean “white” not in the Viking-warrior sense but in the Stuff White People Like sense. Starbucks, that Seattle-born corporate caffeine giant that makes the shittiest coffee in world history and charges credulous customers ten times its value, may employ the occasional dark-skinned so-called “barista”—I hate that term—but finding a black customer in a Starbucks is like finding a unicorn at a 7-Eleven.
This is why it’s a sharp pointy pinnacle of irony that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz—yes, he’s Jewish, because a dozen of you would have mentioned it in the comments anyway—recently launched a publicity blitz encouraging his baristas to engage their customers in an ongoing dialogue about race relations in America.
Right. OK, then, I’ll take a Venti Americano. While you’re preparing my hot beverage, let’s chat about The Bell Curve.
“We’re not in the business of filling bellies,” Schultz told 60 Minutes in 2006. “We’re in the business of filling souls.” Yeah, well, you’re filling my soul with bullshit right now and I’m politely asking for you to stop.