Hart: Starbucks brews up a controversy on race


              FILE - In a Wednesday, March 18, 2015 file photo, Holly Ainslie, a barista at a Starbucks store in Seattle puts a "Race Together" sticker on a customer's cup. Starbucks baristas will no longer write "Race Together" on customers' cups starting Sunday, March 22, 2015, ending as planned a visible component of the company's diversity and racial inequality campaign, according to a memo. The coffee chain's initiative will continue more broadly without the handwritten messages, Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson said.  (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
FILE - In a Wednesday, March 18, 2015 file photo, Holly Ainslie, a barista at a Starbucks store in Seattle puts a "Race Together" sticker on a customer's cup. Starbucks baristas will no longer write "Race Together" on customers' cups starting Sunday, March 22, 2015, ending as planned a visible component of the company's diversity and racial inequality campaign, according to a memo. The coffee chain's initiative will continue more broadly without the handwritten messages, Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson said. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
photo FILE - In this Saturday, May 31, 2014, file photo, the Starbucks logo is seen at one of the company's coffee shops in downtown Chicago. Starbucks is joining the national conversation about race in the latest sign that corporations are trying to tie their brands to big social issues. Starbucks said it will elaborate on the plans at its annual shareholder meeting Wednesday, March 18, 2015, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

Tired of selling overpriced coffee to pretentious white Americans, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz decided he would try to end racism.

He instructed his baristas, the tattooed and nose-ringed students majoring in Women and Gender Studies and carrying $40,000 in student loan debt, to lecture customers on race. Here is what I know for sure: If anyone wants to start a "conversation" with you about race, he is doing two things: calling you racist and presuming to virtuously lecture you on the matter.

Implicit in the tone and tenor of such conversations is that the lecturers are morally superior and not racists, so that automatically makes the recipient morally inferior and a racist. But worry not -- they are there to help you. Liberals take this tone about every nonsensical issue, like global warming and helping the poor. Their stands are not quantifiable, so they can make themselves look like such caring and compassionate people while implying that you are not and would do well to be more like them.

If Schultz had not bowed to public pressure and ended this phase of the "Race Together" campaign -- where baristas wrote that message on customers' cups -- we would have been handed insult on top of the injury of standing in line for a $6.50 cup of coffee, in a place that employs snooty and not-so-bright baristas. Once, when asked his name by a Starbucks employee so he might write it on the customer's cup, the guy said, "Marc with a C." The employee promptly wrote "Cark" on his cup.

It was a terrible idea to have Starbucks workers lecture customers about something so contentious. Harrison Ford had a better view of the runway than these folks have on race.

If we are going to slow the line at Starbucks for a conversation on anything, it ought to be why it charges $6.50 for a cup of gritty coffee that you can get at McDonald's for $1.50. Talk is cheap; why not a latte? Let's talk about how much the dolts who buy coffee each day at Starbucks, versus at McDonald's or making it themselves, could save in a year. $6.50 minus $1.50 is $5. So, 365 days times about $5 extra is $1,825 extra dollars a year, assuming you don't tip the hipster "philosophers" who write your name on your cup.

Starbucks is not a lecture hall; it is a place to meet someone you don't quite trust in your home, or from whom you are buying something on Craigslist. At best, it is a place to finish a term paper.

Of late, the media has been focused on scouring the nation to find pseudo-race-based incidents they can highlight on the news. They misreport, with obvious bias, and then extrapolate to brand each incident as indicative of all of America. Like Starbucks, the media seems to relish giving the condescending stink eye to America on race.

The most egregious recent incident involved those dopey University of Oklahoma frat boys singing a song with the "N" word in it. If Jay Z had sung the same song, he would have gotten a Grammy and a BET Award for Album of the Year.

The Left's renewed focus on race stems largely from the Ferguson, Mo., case, in a lame attempt to pit the races against each other. To review their best set of facts: Michael Brown was the African-American, inner-city youth with a troubled past. Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson traces his family back to England, where white people were invented.

Officer Wilson had just come from a service call to a black neighborhood, where he helped a sick 2-year-old baby and its mother. Michael Brown had just strong-arm robbed a store and assaulted the clerk. The two met by chance. Brown had drugs in his system; Officer Wilson had a great record as a policeman. Because of Democrats and the media fanning the racial fires since then, Wilson was tormented and lost his job, and several policemen have been shot, most recently two in Ferguson.

Racial relations are much worse since President Obama took office. I had really felt he was in the best position to pull us together. He has done the opposite.

How healthy is this one-sided, faux "conversation on race" under false pretenses? About as healthy as paying $18 for a chocolate latte and a stale 900-calorie scone. Starbucks decided to leave the race baiting to the professionals: Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton. It's their livelihood.

Ron Hart is a syndicated op-ed humorist, author and TV/radio commentator. Email him at Ron@RonaldHart.com.

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