Why Ordering Black Coffee May be Racist – A Redux Part 1

By Patrick Hall

The theatrics continue! This time the legacy of institutional racism has once again materialized at everyone’s favorite coffee dispensary. Well actually, not my favorite, since I find a black cup of coffee from McDonald’s, just as good and infinitely less expensive than a “Latte Whatever” at Starbucks.  To refresh your memory, a while back, two black guys were arrested for loitering at a local Starbucks in Philadelphia after they refused to buy anything, while also making use of the restrooms. Of course, the arrest was precipitated by the manager of Starbucks calling law enforcement, which led to the detention of these two racially, if not perpetually aggrieved gentlemen. Following the mandatory racial choreography, that always seems to follow such events, Starbucks, the world’s most “ultra-liberal” and “woke “corporation, immediately required its employees to attend cultural sensitivity training to mitigate such calamitous incidents.

Setting aside the actual validity and/or effectiveness of cultural sensitivity and diversity training, which has established itself as the phrenology of the 21st Century. The hunt for, and elimination of “unconscious, implicit, and micro-racism” is the biggest waste of time, energy, people, and money, since the establishment of the Department of Education in the late 1970s.

Let’s state the reality of the Philly Starbucks incident as well as several similar episodes, that have occurred, that help keep alive the secular canon of racism, no matter how apocryphal, is everywhere. People don’t have the right to loiter or congregate at any business, demanding to use the facility, and not have to abide by that establishment’s policies.  If that were the case, we should all be able to loiter at our local Panera Bread, sit at their tables, use their restrooms when nature calls, and then scream bloody racism, if anyone objects to such behavior.  One gets the feeling, that most likely the individuals involved in this situation would’ve taken offense if someone employed the obvious unconscious/implicit racial bias that is intrinsic in the use of the phrase “I’ll have a black coffee.”

Too many black Americans, constipated from decades of Orwellian Group Think on race, are quick, if not becoming deliberately provocative in staging an incident, that has little or nothing to do with institutional or systemic racism.

By the way, the socio-political etymology of institutional racism has its origins in the Marxist/Leninist epistemic. The charge itself has been deployed for decades by black and white leftists. This is not the America of the Pre-Civil Right Era. However, some people and institutions seem to be working overtime to convince many African Americans and others that racism, sexism, or picking your favorite “ism” still defines us. The Hakeem Jefferies’(D-NY), the NAACP as well as the current occupant of the White House have been the biggest cheerleaders stoking the flames of institutional or systemic racism.  America is just an awful place and needs to indefinitely apologize, make reparation for, or follow some cockamamie idea pushed by the DEI industry to make recompense. This distortion, if not a dystopic mindset embedded in far too many blacks and Liberal Progressives, has been incubating and nurtured for decades.
       
The peer-reviewed alchemy of Critical Race and Gender Theory, which has posed as thinking among our intellectual betters, who now control schools, the media, and the political catechism of many within the Democrat and Republican Party is little more than a cultural toxin.  Tribalism, balkanization, and neo-segregation were introduced into our culture on the installment plan.  Both CRT and the DEI industry only foster homogeneity of thought, inequality, and exclusion. It alienates Americans from each other and poisons our politics. As correctly diagnosed by the late American political journalist Charles Krauthammer, DEI and CRT gestates a hyperconsciousness of race founded in exaggerated grievances. It identifies whites as the enemy of everyone non-white. It disparages meritocracy. Meritocracy is a myth to many within the DEI and CRT group think.  It blames gaps in achievement “exclusively” on racist institutional or systemic forces. Of course, it is done courtesy of colleges and universities since the late 1960s. It has served as the origin of the divide we now see in society. It did not magically appear with the election of Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.