“Would You Like Some Race-Baiting with that Triple-Caramel Macchiato, Sir?”
by Alexander Zubatov
Starbucks’ decision to have its baristas initiate conversations about race (and, presumably, racism) with its customers has to be one of the most hyperbolically eye-rolling and tone-deaf moments in the recent history of our race-obsessed culture. Contrary to the bizarre but prevailing common wisdom that suggests we are in need of some sort of more expansive national conversation about race, “[o]ur country engages in an endless ‘conversation’ about race year round,” as the noted linguistic professor and commentator John McWhorter has recently written, see http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/15/the-privilege-of-checking-white-privilege.html, a point a New York Magazine cover story in April 2014 made in some detail. See http://nymag.com/news/features/obama-presidency-race-2014-4/. As I have argued extensively in these pages, citing both statistics and psychological findings, see https://medium.com/@Zoobahtov/keep-your-stinkin-race-to-yourself-143d6ecf078d, our non-stop race talk has done and will continue to do nothing but inflame passions, anger and polarize people and make our race divide worse, not better. This is, as I explain in some detail in the linked article, because — as those who have tried to reason with young-earth creationists, vaccine truthers or climate change deniers have discovered — no matter how much evidence you think you have on your side or how compelling you believe your argument to be, convincing anyone of anything when they have a position already tethered to their larger political leanings is very, very difficult, and in most cases, raising the issue simply reinforces rather than dispelling people’s prevailing prejudices.
Continuing to talk about race is, in other words, only making people angrier and more dug-in in their views, sending working-class white people fleeing to the Republican Party, widening the black-white divide between the two political parties, and resulting, in the end, in those working-class whites casting votes against their own economic interests and against policies that would lessen economic inequality. Because black people in America are disproportionately poor, the end-result is that they are the ones harmed most by our non-stop race talk. If what we really want to do is bring down our race barriers, the most effective, practical solution is to stop talking so much about race and start talking a lot more about class, which is a conversation that has the potential to unite rather than divide the working class against the 1%. Equalizing income and opportunities and helping the poor will disproportionately help black people without alienating white people — without whom this will never get done — and it is only when blacks and whites start interacting as economic and social equals — working together, living together, partying together, marrying each other, having kids together — that racism will die a natural death. The “Occupy” movement had started that much-need national conversation about class, but it has since died down and been eclipsed by Ferguson, Eric Garner and other media-hyped race incidents the sensationalistic coverage of which is only serving to reinforce our differences.
At the very least, in this politically charged environment, like most conversations about politics and religion, any dialogue about race, if it is to be had at all, requires a lot of skill and delicacy. If our professional chattering classes — our public intellectuals, politicians, political pundits, journalists and activists — are screwing it up so badly, what reason is there to think that frazzled and caffeinated Starbucks baristas raising race with frazzled and caffeinated customers will succeed where these others have failed?
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Alexander Zubatov is a practicing attorney specializing in general commercial litigation. He is also a practicing writer specializing in general non-commercial poetry, fiction, drama, essays and polemics. In the words of one of his intellectual heroes, José Ortega y Gasset, biography is “a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.”
Some of his articles have appeared in The Hedgehog Review, The Montreal Review, The Fortnightly Review, New English Review, Culture Wars and nthposition.
He makes occasional, unscheduled appearances on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Zoobahtov).
