“Starbucks’s new campaign is yet another sign of the relentless politicization of American culture,” Jonah Goldberg writes today:
It’s ironic. The Obama years were supposed to usher in an era of racial harmony. That didn’t happen — which presumably is why Schultz feels the need to help mend our racial wounds. What has happened, however, is that hordes of college graduates, unable to find jobs suitable to their degrees, have ended up toiling away at places like Starbucks.It’s kind of ingenious. Since sociology majors can’t find relevant jobs, Schultz is making the jobs they have relevant to their majors. If this becomes a trend, maybe my dog walkers will start reciting Proust in French on their perambulations.
As a business decision, I find the whole thing bizarre. If I don’t have my coffee in the morning, I get a headache that feels like a Hell’s Angel is trying to press his meaty thumb through my forehead. This is not the most propitious moment to engage me in a conversation about my “race journey.” Worse, Starbucks lines are already long. How much longer will they get when the barista takes 20 minutes out of his or her job to debate the Moynihan Report with a customer?
On Red Eye last night, Rob Long made a great observation — there’s no Starbucks in Ferguson. If Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ CEO wants to really start a dialogue about race, perhaps he needs to put his company’s money where is mouth is, and start there.
Meanwhile, David P. Goldman, writing in his “Spengler” column at PJM wants to start a dialogue about the truly important issues that vex us all: It’s “Time for a National Conversation About Why Starbucks Coffee Is Disgusting.”
By the way, as with all “Progressive” concepts, Schultz’s thinking is stuck in America’s distant past — it’s always Alabama in 1963 for the left, unless it’s 1933 and they’re searching for their next Roosevelt. But in the real 21st century America, my local town in Northern California has a widely divergent racial culture filled Asians from Japan, China and Korea; people of Spanish and Mexican descent, and people of pallor like myself. And by and large, they seem to get on pretty darn well. Oh to be a fly on a wall when a white barista lectures an Asian or someone of Latino origin to be more harmonious in their race relations.
Lest you wind up in one of Hillary’s “Fun Camps” for political reeducation.
Exit Question: “Why Is There No Starbucks Coffee House in Selma?”
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