One Morning At Starbucks
By Mitch Berg
SCENE: Mitch BERG walks into a Starbucks and approaches the order counter. Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, the barrista, is behind the counter.
BERG: Large light roast and some of that lemon cake, please.
BIRKENSTOCK: Sure. But first – what do you think about race?
BERG: Huh?
BIRKENSTOCK: When did you first become aware of your race?
BERG: The race I’m in to get to work? About 45 minutes ago.
BIRKENSTOCK: What?
BERG: It’s a joke. Research shows that race is among the first things babies perceive about people in the world around them. Even tiny babies are uncomfortable around people that aren’t the same race as their parents. So a form of “racism” – being uncomfortable around people like you – is born into human beings.
BIRKENSTOCK: White babies?
BERG: All babies. And I think it holds true through peoples’ lives, and expands on itself. People are more comfortable around people like them; they are uneasy around people who aren’t. And it’s not just race – class is something babies learn later on – but race is a big one. Some middle class whites are uncomfortable around blacks. Middle-class blacks get nervous around blue-collar white people under certain circumstances. Jennifer Lopez probably watches herself around people who still are “from the block”. White MPR listeners avoid being around white people with leathers and Harley-Davidsons.
Everyone on earth – including Barristas who went to Carlton…
BIRKENSTOCK: …eeeew. I went to Saint Olaf!
BERG: Exactly. Now – could you leave a little room for cream…
BIRKENSTOCK: What do you think about your privilege?
BERG: My privilege?
BIRKENSTOCK: White privilege!
BERG: I think there’s a reason that black people – and white people with liberal guilt – talk about it, and Latinos, Asians, and African immigrants largely don’t.
BIRKENSTOCK: They’re racists too!
BERG: No, they and their ancestors largely came here of their own free will, while the African-Americans are culturally as well as geneologically descended from slaves. And 150 years of emancipation and 50 years of full rights haven’t undone 500 years of cultural damage. So the question is, what do you do about it?
BIRKENSTOCK: Have I asked you about your privilege yet?
BERG: The privilege is this: I’m descended from a culture that, going back almost 1,500 years, was dominated by a patriarchal society that was ruled by a warrior elite and venerated fighting skill and still doesn’t have a word for “relax, man”, but had more words for “combat” than Eskimos have for “snow” or the Irish have for “vomit”. And between geography, the market, and my ancestors’ skill at killing their enemies, nobody managed for the most part to enslave my ancestors. And the biggest thing I have to say about privilege is that I’m sorry for those whose ancestors and their matriarchal, hunter-gatherer societies were unable to protect their people from slavery.
But what do you want me to do about it now?
BIRKENSTOCK: So…do you think your choice of coffee is itself racist?
BERG: (Turns and walks out the door)
(And SCENE)
March 19th, 2015 at 12:29 pm
Baristas studied all this privilege stuff in college; probably wrote a capstone paper on it, too. It’s a way for Starbucks to make their employees feel better about themselves that doesn’t involve any additional remuneration.
March 19th, 2015 at 1:00 pm
You want a conversation in a coffee shop about race?
I’d like a French Vanilla Roast with extra cream, lighter than Obama, but not as light as Beyonce, more like Halle Berry.
There, happy now?
March 19th, 2015 at 1:21 pm
Something like 90% of the West Africans exported as slaves to the New World ended up in the Caribbean and in South America.
Also, Barack Obama is an African American who is not descended from slaves. His ancestors, as far as I can tell, were free Kenyan Muslims and Kansas Jayhawkers.
March 19th, 2015 at 1:27 pm
I have a liberal arts degree. Every single class I took was chock-a-block with an anti-capitalist, anti-freedom rhetoric. The teachers were okay — some of them might even have had conservative leanings — but the approved textbooks and assignments were written by socialists. A simple assignment to write a non-political essay, for example, would use as an example a text comparing the wonders of the Swedish, cradle-to-grave welfare system with the less generous American system.
March 19th, 2015 at 2:14 pm
When libs talk about “structural” racism in society, or “structural” inequality in the economy, they are using a term from literary criticism. Structural criticism came from continental Europe (Switzerland, I think) in the mid-twentieth century. It was all the rage when Obama (and Mitch) got their LA degrees.
The idea is that the structure of a literary work makes it a certain kind of text, more so than the words used and ideas expressed by the writer. The structure of a text may be sexist, or racist, or whatever, without the writer or reader knowing it. It is baked into it.
This is nonsense, of course, and the best literary people know that it is a means to an end, not an objective use of criticism. It doesn’t describe the reality of a text. But the dimwit LA student can somehow believe that they are outside of the structure of society, criticizing it from a distant, objective vantage point. They don’t see that their own viewpoint is one of privilege, even when they assume that they have the power to reorder peoples’ lives to suit their arbitrary whims.
But, anyway, that’s one reason why you can’t talk to them. Your arguments about your 2nd amendment rights and the human right to self defense are meaningless to them. You are part of the structural violence in American society, they are its cure. They are the zookeeper, you are the animal in the cage arguing for your natural right to kill and eat people. They judge you, it’s never the other way around.
March 20th, 2015 at 5:38 am
It was all the rage when Obama (and Mitch) got their LA degrees.
Although my advisor in my English major mentioned it only to express his revulsion for it.
March 20th, 2015 at 11:21 am
http://thefederalistpapers.integratedmarket.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sk031915dAPC.jpg
March 20th, 2015 at 5:19 pm
You know, if Starbucks really wants to do something for poor minorities, what they really need to do is send that St. Olaf grad and her buddies to open up shops in majority-minority neighborhoods. Did you know that there is a caffeine desert in Gary, Indiana, which has NO Starbucks franchises? In the same way, all the Starbucks stores in Washington, DC are concentrated around the Mall, and those in Chicago are for some mysterious reason concentrated around the Loop. There are none along Stony Island coming up towards Lake Shore Drive.
Lots of liberal arts grads need good employment, along with lots of minorities, and obviously Mr. Schultz does not care about minorities’ need for caffeine.
March 20th, 2015 at 7:27 pm
Also not in East St.Louis, Ferguson, and Selmahttp://m.cnsnews.com/commentary/jen-kuznicki/why-there-no-starbucks-coffee-house-selma
March 20th, 2015 at 7:27 pm
Also not in East St.Louis, Ferguson, and Selma http://m.cnsnews.com/commentary/jen-kuznicki/why-there-no-starbucks-coffee-house-selma