Moved to investigate the subject by Dave Rubin’s podcast of Mar. 20, I was surprised to discover that more than one “progressive” commentator over the last few years has flogged the absurd notion that putting cream or milk in one’s coffee is an act of White Supremacy.
Abhijit lyer-Mitra is a respected Indian political analyst with affiliations to such entities as New Delhi’s “Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies” as well as the online platform “South Asian Studies.” He is not, that is to say, just some ignorant, radical, Left-wing loonie. Yet his Twitter account includes the following: “Ordering coffee is racist, Period! Adding milk and froth to black coffee is a symbolic representation of colonization, of hatred of dark skin and needing to lighten it.”
Google the topic of the relationship between coffee and White Supremacy and you will discover a number of entries devoted to that theme. One, posted by a group which identifies as Afru Staff, includes the headline: “Is coffee racist? How drinking coffee perpetuates white supremacy.” This introduction is elaborated by the following: “Created by Black people for Black people — and now a pillar of white supremacist capitalism. If you consume coffee, you are helping an industry built on racism.”
Last March, Fast Company published an article exposing “The unbearable whiteness of coffee.” One learned that coffee was “stolen” from Black Africans in the 1600s by the Dutch and that the yearly 100 billion dollars in sales accrued by companies owned preeminently by Whites is an abomination. Enterprises such as Cxfeeblack of Memphis, launched by a colored couple, are apparently including the history of this vile theft on their packaging.
These would seem to be examples of that “moral” outrage which most on the Left share for what they have come to term “cultural appropriation.” To those committed to Identity Politics, affluent White Westerners have no right to profit from or indeed even enjoy traditions and products indigenous to peoples now numbered among the “oppressed.” This is a perspective that is petty, dishonest, and, ultimately, Racist!
The absurd double-standard implicit in Marxism is basic to the concept of “cultural appropriation.” If White people ought not to be exploiting any aspects of Black African culture, ought Black Africans to be entitled to the benefits of Western Science and Rationalism? Are people of Color who have come to share in the affluence afforded by Capitalism, the technological wonders born mostly of Western research, and the Social Order and Freedoms resulting from the Enlightenment’s endorsement of Democracy, somehow guilty of appropriating what is not really theirs? Would any decent White person even dream of such an accusation? Of course not!
As an Italian, ought I to be outraged that non-Italians around the world are enjoying and profiting from the delights of my forefathers’ cuisine? Is every pizzeria on the planet not owned by an Italian guilty of cultural appropriation?
Identifying as a victim of oppression exonerates one of any responsibility for one’s fate. But White Westerners had nothing to do with the failure of Black Africans to introduce coffee to the rest of the world and profit from its allure? 2500 years ago Aristotle took it for granted that Man was an intelligent being obligated by that very fact to apply his Intellect and Will to the stuff of the real world in the pursuit of a better life, both morally and materially. He was, that is to say, duty bound to engage actively with that world rather than passively accepting the conditions to which he was born. It was an ethos which would ultimately evolve into an economic system, Capitalism, clearly designed to reward human enterprise and imagination. Yes, as Capitalism values Human Freedom, it also enables those of questionable ethics to pursue their selfish ends. But is Capitalism the culprit or Human Nature? Are the socioeconomic disparities which inevitably emerge as a result of “free enterprise,” a moral abomination or the result of the simple, undeniable differences evident from person to person and, indeed, culture to culture.
The narrative of Victimization implicit in the statements cited above is rooted in a fundamental disdain for Capitalism, the notion that those who have achieved are always somehow guilty of violating those who have not. It is a narrative deigned to obfuscate the pragmatic superiority of Western European Cultures to those around the world which seemed content to merely exist on the planet. It is a narrative rooted in Envy.
As I have said repeatedly, no one is exonerating Western Colonialists or Capitalists of their many sins. But are not Blacks who descry the fact that Whites brought coffee to the rest of the world, guilty of seeing things from an abjectly racial perspective? Ought not truly evolved Humans to want to share every glorious gift of this planet with every other human on its surface?
And ought not those convinced that Whites who put cream in their coffee are somehow guilty of racial intolerance, to seek psychiatric help?