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Progressives Prove Once Again That They Don’t Care About Racism

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

For people who claim to oppose racism in American society, some progressives are having a hard time figuring out how to do it. Indeed, these people have taken the concept of racial bigotry and turned it into a mockery of those who actually fought to diminish the impact of racism on minorities.

I have long contended that most high-profile progressives don’t give a rip about racism or its effects on Americans. They prove it time and time again when they refuse to call it out when it is displayed by people on their own team.

But another way we can tell that these people aren’t as concerned about racism as they would have us believe is in how they apply the label. Just this week, there were at least two stories demonstrating how little these people care about the supposed fight to end bigotry.

For starters, one of these individuals published an unintentionally hilarious article claiming that drinking coffee is racist. I thought it humorous when I first saw it. I was having my morning steaming cup of racism when I first found out I was perpetuating white supremacy.

Near the beginning of the piece, the author claims that white people commonly tell a joke about coffee: “There are three things that are necessary in order to make a cup of coffee, and they are: first, a black man to roast the coffee; second, a yellow man to grind it; and third, a white man to drink it.”

Apparently, blacks and Asians don’t enjoy a good cup of joe. This is something reserved only for racist white folks.

The author goes on to argue that “every facet of the coffee industry, in fact, is rooted in racism” and that when consuming the beverage, “whites have been able to drink the fruits of our labor and our culture with impunity.”

How dare these melanin-challenged individuals think they can have a hot java every now and then?! The unmitigated gall!

Oh, but it gets better.

The author then explains:

Coffee first came to North America and Europe between 1650 and 1700. But coffee was an important, almost religious, part of Black culture going as far back as the 1400s in Ethiopia. After the whites got the first sip of the Black delicacy, they brutally enslaved people of color to keep up with demand, turning a ritualistic drink into another consumer product in the colonial capitalist machine.

Later in the piece, the author suggests that people should boycott the coffee industry due to its problematic history. This article claims that even buying specialty coffee or patronizing a local coffee shop because the former “suggests that some coffee is somehow superior to others” and the latter is the “number one sign of gentrification of Black spaces and Black places.”

The whole thing reads like one of my satire pieces. But I checked, and it does not appear the site is using humor to make a point.

But then we have birds, or specifically, pictures of birds that are also guilty of racial bigotry. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, a columnist put the Audobon Society in his crosshairs, claiming that it too, is racist. RedState’s Brad Slager explained:

John James Audubon was a naturalist who painted birds to create a record and aid in the preservation of threatened creatures. Audubon discovered dozens of new species and his collected work in “The Birds of America” is still regarded as an important source to this day. HOWEVER — Audubon owned slaves, and as such, this means he needs to be erased from the historical record. There has been a call to have the Audubon name stricken from the organization.

Slager further explained that the organization has considered changing its name to something less slaveownery, but for now, it is sticking with its current namesake. Dino Grandoni was not amused by this development. In the piece, he says that this “move comes even as about half a dozen of the organization’s regional chapters have pledged to scrub his name from their titles.”

The columnist also argues that the organization’s decision to keep its name “underscores the challenge of rebuking a racist past while retaining history that has made ‘Audobon’ a household name associated with protecting birds.”

After reading those two stories, I think my IQ dropped by about ten points. You see what I am willing to go through for you, dear reader?

But seriously, these people have taken the concept of racism and used it in a way that would be comical if they were not serious. Next thing you know, these Marxists will be calling for a boycott of cotton because it perpetuates the legacy of slavery.

Here’s the important question: If you were truly serious about dealing with racism’s impact on America, would you be focusing your efforts on coffee and birds? These people have to know they will never persuade people to believe that drinking coffee is racist nor will anyone care about the name of the Audobon Society. Instead, they would focus on areas in which racism actually has a deleterious effect on aspects of the culture.

Perhaps these people have never truly experienced racism, so they don’t understand what it really means. Imagine what the reaction would be if these people told Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. that they were concerned about the racism of coffee and birds?

I think it is possible that both of these leaders might feel that they accomplished their objective. If there are people identifying racism in such silly areas, maybe it’s possible that America has made substantial progress in addressing the issue.

 

The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

 

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