Starbucks Dials Back Racialist Campaign

True fact, @Starbucks: Liberals once believed people shouldn’t be valued for the color of their skin. #RaceTogether pic.twitter.com/6qAl4sPWjg

— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) March 22, 2015

“Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Imposes His Racial Hang-ups On America,” John Nolte wrote yesterday at Big Government, and as Tom Blumer added at NewsBusters, USA Today was eager to use their newspaper as a vehicle to promote Schultz’s racialism, bundling the above multipage folder into their papers yesterday. Fortunately, as Reuters (no stranger to leftwing evangelicalism themselves) reports today, Schultz or someone wiser at his company realized that having 20-something clerks lecture their customers on race was a staggeringly stupid idea for all concerned:

Starbucks Corp head Howard Schultz told employees on Sunday they will no longer be encouraged to write “Race Together” on drinks cups, but the company’s effort to promote discussion of racial issues “is far from over”.

The world’s biggest coffee chain kicked off a U.S. race relations campaign last week when it published full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers with the words “Shall We Overcome?” at centre page and “RaceTogether” and the Starbucks logo near the bottom. Employees behind the counter were also given the option of writing “Race Together” on customers’ cups.

The campaign was met with skepticism on social media, with many complaining the company was overstepping it boundaries with a campaign on sensitive cultural topics that had no place in the coffee shop’s lines.

Well, yes:

Dear Starbucks: 1. America is not a college campus. 2. You are not the faculty. 3. I am not paying tuition to take your exam. — David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 22, 2015

Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist had a slightly different take on Schultz’s mad scheme; in her opinion, he doesn’t view himself as a far left college headmaster, but as a fundamentalist preacher eager to use his underlings as missionaries to spread the socialist gospel, ala Father Coughlin or Rev. Wright. As Hemingway wrote, “With Race Together, Starbucks Is Using Worst Of Evangelical Practices:”

The whole campaign reminded me so much of this story from 2004, when an American Airlines pilot got on the loudspeaker and asked passengers who were Christian to raise their hands. Then he suggested to the ones who raised their hands that they spend the remainder of the flight trying to convert those who hadn’t. The passengers were so confused by the request that they wondered if the pilot was a terrorist.

Listen, I love few things more than sharing the good news that Jesus has triumphed over sin, death and Satan with others and I hate racism. But there’s a reason why the American Airlines pilot and the Starbucks approaches freak people out! Yes, part of it is that there’s a time and place to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and discuss difficult social problems. But also, these things are highly ineffective when done outside of a personal relationship.

Both of these approaches also exhibit extreme vocational confusion.

* * * * * * *

Simply flying a plane to the best of your ability and bringing hundreds of passengers safely from one point to another is a great way to serve your neighbor. You don’t need to hand out cross pins or get on the loudspeaker and introduce people to Jesus to make it a good work.

It’s curious; for leftwing consumers, simply knowing that a CEO disagrees with this week’s stance on gay marriage or Obamacare is enough to get him fired or have his chain boycotted. But a leftwing CEO feels perfectly entitled to proselytize the Gleichschaltung to his customers.

Exit question: How long would Starbucks permit a “barista” to enthusiastically preach the real gospel to his customers as an aide to racial healing?

Hey, if I get a job as a @Starbucks barista, can I hand out Catholic tracts, too? #SalvationTogether

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) March 20, 2015

By the way, speaking of the Gleichschaltung, I stopped going to Starbucks on a regular basis two or three years ago when they bowed to Obamacare-related laws and began printing calorie counts on their menu boards. It wasn’t so much paying $5.00 for a cup of coffee that’s essentially a warm milkshake that was problematic, but being hit in the face that I now had an additional 500 calories or more to burn off at the gym that night. Now with their CEO having dropped the mask and gone the full Bullworth-meets-Eric Holder on his customers, I realize I was simply ahead of the curve in avoiding their product.

But hey, as they say at MSNBC’s parent network:

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