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Bleary-eyed, half-awake, feet dragging and shoulders drooped, likely somewhere on the hangover scale, and mentally incapable of summoning an emotion as simple as amusement, let alone as consuming as empathy — this is my state of being as I walk into a Starbucks nine times out of ten. Conversation is low on my list of things I crave before lunch. In fact, conversation isn’t on that list at all. The list actually just goes coffee, and then lunch. Pre-lunch is the worst time of the day.
All of that is to say that having a barista ask me my thoughts on race in America as he or she hands me my coffee sounds like a nightmare. But apparently that’s exactly what Starbucks is now aiming to do, because racial dialogue in America wasn’t stupid enough already, so now the most obnoxious parts of everyone’s Twitter and Facebook feeds get to play out in front of us every morning, and with a Norah Jones soundtrack!
In partnership with USA Today, Starbucks has launched a week-long campaign under the banner “Race Together” to get staff and customers talking about race. In a video message, Schultz urges “partners” to write the phrase on their paper cups “to facilitate a conversation between you and our customers.”
Weren’t the heart palpitations and crazy diarrhea enough? How many different ways do you have to make my day miserable? Keep this going and I will give up and switch back to an Adderall prescription. Depression, anxiety, and appetite loss all seem more tolerable than a fast food worker asking me in public how many times I’ve been in a black guy’s house in the past year. No, really, Starbucks employees are about to start asking you that.
A USA Today supplement, set to be published March 20, includes a number of “conversation starters,” including the fill-in-the-blank question: “In the past year, I have been to the home of someone of a different race ___ times.”
Thank you for the coffee, now can I serve you a hot cup of shut the fuck up?
Who keeps a mental tally of that!?! That is the most liberal-arts-student-who-didn’t-grow-up-around-different-races-and-is-so-desperate-to-seem-progressive-that-they’re-actually-condescending shit I’ve ever heard. There will definitely be plenty of smug, self-anointed “tolerant” white people who are going to write down a number they are WAY too pleased with and then leave it showing out toward the seating area for others to see — along with their shitty Tumblr page. If you know the exact number, or even a ballpark figure, for the amount of times you’ve been in a person of a different race’s home in the past year, you are an asshole, and I hope the cup of coffee you write that number on falls into your lap and burns your crotch like it’s a Ferguson Little Caesar’s.
“Staying silent is not who we are,” chief executive Howard Schultz said at an employee forum in December.
No, serving coffee is who you are. If silence, or at least a pleasant but brief interaction, isn’t an option in that transaction, then believe me when I say I would rather go to a 7/11 and endure the drunk hobo buying another 2×4 can of Busch at 9am crap his pants in the aisle as I pour a cup of their mediocre hot brown caffeinated water than tell some barista how many minority Facebook friends I have, or however else a gentrifying, third-world exploiting, chain coffee shop judges whether or not I am in tune with my racial sensitivity. I would rather my new morning pick-me-up be a kick to the groin than have to deal with this.
Fuck it, I might go into a Starbucks this week and stream interracial porn on my iPhone 6 Plus, or as I like to call it, my hand TV, look at the barista, and ask, “Am I down with other races? You tell me?”
“It is an opportunity to begin to re-examine how we can create a more empathetic and inclusive society,” he said in a press release. “One conversation at a time.”
The only way in which Starbucks fosters a more inclusive society is that it’s sort of like The Borg.
Please just give me my coffee and leave me alone, because guess what? I don’t care about black people that early in the morning. I don’t care about any people, or anything, except the bed behind me, the sandwich in my near future, and the cup of coffee that will get me from A to B.
[via The Washington Post]
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Rob Fox
Rob Fox is a Senior Writer for Total Frat Move (as Bacon), Rowdy Gentleman, and Post Grad Problems. He is a graduate, without honors, from the University of Missouri. From St. Louis originally, he currently lives in Austin, Texas, and still has not admitted to his family what he does for a living. He is also prone to having wet nightmares ever since losing his virginity in a haunted house. Email: rob@grandex.co
@BaconTFM
@bacontfm
How would you like your coffee?
As racially diverse as your board of executives please.
So a glass of plain milk then?
Did I stutter?
“I’d like my coffee African-American please.”
“I like my coffee like I like my women. Black, bitter, and preferably fair trade.”
In the past year, I have been to the home of someone of a different race….are we counting Asians as people of a different race, or do they not count because white people generally don’t fear them? Because it’s going to make my answer infinitely higher. Oh, and fearing their driving doesn’t count. Look Starbucks, I’m talking about race!
Fuck. Was supposed to go under FP’s comment.
This was perfect. Well written Bacon.
I wonder what they write on non-white people’s cups? How many white friends do you have?
“Token means ________ to me”.
Do we get to ask them how many black people names they misspell on their coffee cups? We already know basic white girl names are hard enough as seen on your local instagram feed.
Does my coke guy count? I go to his house all the time.
Trusting your lowest level employee to discuss race relations without any prior training is wildly dangerous. The barista is given more training on how to brew coffee than she is on how to intelligently discuss race relations. This is going to end very poorly.
UPDATE: Starbucks’ week-long “RaceTogether” campaign has been modified to “put every resource we have into building a time machine and erasing this terrible decision from the history” campaign. Donations are also being excepted.
They don’t even use their time machine to go back and fix racial injustices. Shows how caring they really are.
Stock price first – then lynchings.
On that note – what would you have to do exactly to stop racial injustice with such hypothetical time machine? I would wager it would come down to somehow preventing mankind from existing, but I guess you could attack it piecemeal.
I meant more like, maybe go back a stop a few specific incidents, than stop it as a whole. That’s impossible.
Rewrite the Bible, Torch, etc. to say on every page “blessed is he who takes a wife of different color.”
Some white guy somewhere will get fired over this abortion of an ad campaign.
0.
No because I’m racist but I haven’t been in a black persons house in the last year.
Well, at least that’s easy to count.