Back in my day, the commercials were simple: someone would wake up early, walk downstairs, get the coffee going, and the "best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup" line would blare across the television. Then, there was the Colombian guy and his mule. First, we all know that's a lie: waking up in the morning sucks. Second, it's coffee, relax. I like it—it gets me through the day, but it's not like the jolt you get from smelling salts. The problem is that these commercials are now racist, and the fact that you, the coffee drinker, engage in this innocuous, mundane ritual of making a cup of joe makes you someone akin to Leonardo DiCaprio's character in "Django Unchained." Drinking coffee is racist because coffee beans are racist.
Let's not act shocked; we all knew someone would whip out a book, see some coffee slaves, and go apoplectic.
Name anything, and someone from the far left could argue about how it perpetuates white supremacy because everything does, even reading. I'm waiting for that shoe to drop (via Afru.com):
If you have a white coffee drinking friend, he or she may have even let you in on the old coffee joke white coffee drinkers share when PoC aren’t around: “there are three things that are necessary in order to make a cup of coffee, and they are: first, a black man to roast the coffee; second, a yellow man to grind it; and third, a white man to drink it.”
Well, I’m here to validate your lived experience; coffee is in fact horribly racist, and there’s data to back it up.
Every facet of the coffee industry, in fact, is rooted in racism. From the moment the whites viciously stole coffee from Black and Brown People to the present-day Karen sipping her morning cup of white supremacy, whites have been able to drink the fruits of our labor and our culture with impunity.
There’s nothing more important to Black folks than learning more about their rich history and embracing the unequalled creativity and genius of their Blackness. It’s only recently that historians have begun to recognize the achievements of Black people: from building the pyramids, to composing classical symphonies, to creating the day to day life fuel of the white supremacist capitalist system– wait, what!?
It’s true.
“The history of coffee is both fascinating and tragic,” writes Phyllis Johnson, founder of BD Imports, in Strong Black Coffee: Why Aren’t African-Americans More Prominent in the Coffee Industry? “Working through this unpleasant history is necessary for everyone involved in coffee. For some, this history is a source of empowerment; for others, it is a source of anger, hurt and shame. Unfortunately, for many this history is unknown. It’s important that we understand and acknowledge this history.”
It’s a well-known fact that whites would be eating bland food, like plain bread and gruel, if it weren’t for their theft of culinary secrets from people of color, and especially Black folks. That’s precisely why when the whites found out about coffee, it became one of the reasons they decided to victimize and appropriate Black civilization wholesale.
[…]
Unfortunately, coffee is not the only racist drink on the market. Milk also became racist after white supremacists began using the white drink as a symbol of their skin. Yes, racist roots in the coffee industry are certainly much deeper, but the whiteness of milk and milk’s devastating effects on the beautiful Black body makes it almost as bad as coffee for some Black people.
So, if both milk and coffee are racist, what can be done? Many people will insist that combining the two drinks actually cancels out the racism, because it represents the white becoming pregnant with Blackness, and creating a delicious Brown result. This is why antiracist folks often take milk in their coffee — a subconscious purifying ritual.
But ultimately, and I know this will hurt, a proper commitment to doing antiracist direct action requires that we give up coffee altogether. Unless you’re Ethiopian.
Lord have mercy, what the hell did I, did you, just read? Just to cover our bases, this may be a well-crafted satire because I've heard about the "milk being racist" theory, and I still don't know if that's a position to be taken seriously. I'm okay with ethnic and racial groups learning about their history, embracing it, and even providing lectures on some darker aspects. Slavery existed; Africa was colonized—these are facts. But boycotting coffee and people thinking mixing coffee and milk "cancels out the racism" should be a huge red flag that this could be a parody. Then again, it's sad that I could imagine some people taking this coffee/milk position seriously.
Who knows? But if coffee is racist, I hate to say it, but I don't care. Bring me another cup. No, a whole thermos, please.
