(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A recently published article on a black activist blog that attempts to “spark meaningful conversations” about racial justice argued that drinking coffee is an act of white supremacy.
Published on a site called Afru, the unbylined article, credited simply to the Afru staff, claimed that coffee was the most racist beverage and white people “viciously” stole it from people of color via colonialism.
It kicked off by accusing white people of not specifically catering to people of color in their coffee shops and also pushed the theory that black people were consistently denied access to restrooms in coffee shops.
Contrary to the claim, the well-known coffeeshop Starbucks in 2020 ended its colorblind policy of allowing only paying customers to use the restroom specifically out of concerns that it inconvenienced marginalized people of color.
Yet the article pressed on even without the necessary factual support, even invoking the racist pejorative “Karen” to refer to privileged white women.
“Every facet of the coffee industry, in fact, is rooted in racism,” the article argued. “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.”
The article then descended into a fevered recounting of the “afrocentric, anticolonial, and antiracist history of coffee,” while berating whites “for their theft of culinary secrets from people of color, especially black folks.”
It also argued that white people drinking coffee, encouraging the drinking of “specialty coffee” and establishing coffee shops and other related businesses in black neighborhoods were classist, racist and encouraged gentrification.
“If you think coffee culture can find refuge in specialty coffee, think again,” it said. “This might be obvious to some, but I’ll spell it out for the folks in the back: the bourgeois notion of ‘specialty coffee’ is explicitly rooted in classism, which is directly linked to racism.”
The article further linked the purported racism in the coffee industry to the alleged racism of milk.
“So, if both milk and coffee are racist, what can be done?” it asked.
“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,” the article continued. “This is why antiracist folks often take milk in their coffee—a subconscious purifying ritual.”
The article concludes that in order to properly comply with antiracist doctrine, activists must secede coffee to white people, unless they’re Ethiopian.
The addition of coffee is among an ever-growing list of things that have ridiculously fallen victim to race-baiting accusations since the rise of cancel culture.
Wokesters most recently attempted to claim that spring cleaning—and cleanliness in general—was a racist dog whistle.
Some on both the right and left have attempted to catalogue the absurd examples.
IMPORTANT THREAD 🧵👇
Brave social justice activists such as myself are working tirelessly to expose *all* the racist elements within our society.
Sometimes it is difficult to keep up, so I thought it would be helpful to curate a comprehensive list…
— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) July 9, 2020
Even one Afro-centric blog, The Root, recognized that the accusations had become something of a self-parody when compiling their own arbitrary list.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
