White Guilt With That Flat White? Starbucks Targets White Employees—and Customers—For Possibly Illegal Racial Harassment
03/17/2015
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Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (above) has announced a bizarre new campaign under which employees are encouraged to write 635621119047006841-XXX-Race-Together[1]"RaceTogether" on cups and... 'create a more empathetic and inclusive society - one conversation at a time'. See the posts by Eugene Gant, below—I learned about it from the Daily Mail.

Hard to imagine how this will work, exactly:

Customer: Americano, tall, sugar.

Barista: Would you like a side of white guilt with that, sir?

Customer: No, just the coffee, thanks.

Barista: Whites enslaved blacks and raped their great-grandmothers, and all you can think about is coffee? Economic inequality endures, all because of white racism. Innocent black men are murdered every day by racist police. Black poverty persists while overprivileged whites spend ungodly sums on fancy coffee drinks. You are a pig.

Customer: Is there a Dunkin' Donuts near here?

Beyond the colossal stupidity of such a campaign—including the complete unlikelihood that this would do absolutely anything to change race relations in America—it's probably illegal.

Your typical white Starbucks customer is probably pre-programmed with white guilt. But like me, one could be the rare white who's racially conscious but also thoroughly in tune with Stuff White People Like, including snarky coffee.

The bigger problem is employees. White employees who dissent from political correctness are subjected to a hostile work environment by being forced to engage in white-bashing—which could easily be proven to be the only "correct" conversation to have about race. And even such employees who decline the conversations have to stand in earshot of them, all day long.

Imagine the hapless white barista who thinks races should live apart—and dares to write RaceApart on a cup.

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