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Is coffee racist? How drinking coffee perpetuates white supremacy 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.

If you’re a person of color, you know what I’m talking about. You walk into a new coffee shop and your senses are overwhelmed with whiteness and you get the glare from the Karens. The white hipster barista lines herself up between you and the bathrooms, ready to tell you non-customers aren’t welcome.

If you have a white coffee drinking friend, he or she may have even let you in on the old coffee joke white coffee drinkers share when PoC aren’t around: “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.”

Well, I’m here to validate your lived experience; coffee is in fact horribly racist, and there’s data to back it up.

Every facet of the coffee industry, in fact, is rooted in racism. From the moment the whites viciously stole coffee from Black and Brown People to the present-day Karen sipping her morning cup of white supremacy, whites have been able to drink the fruits of our labor and our culture with impunity.

An Afrocentric, anticolonial, and antiracist history of coffee

slaves working on a coffee farm

There’s nothing more important to Black folks than learning more about their rich history and embracing the unequalled creativity and genius of their Blackness. It’s only recently that historians have begun to recognize the achievements of Black people: from building the pyramids, to composing classical symphonies, to creating the day to day life fuel of the white supremacist capitalist system– wait, what!?

It’s true.

“The history of coffee is both fascinating and tragic,” writes Phyllis Johnson, founder of BD Imports, in Strong Black Coffee: Why Aren’t African-Americans More Prominent in the Coffee Industry? “Working through this unpleasant history is necessary for everyone involved in coffee. For some, this history is a source of empowerment; for others, it is a source of anger, hurt and shame. Unfortunately, for many this history is unknown. It’s important that we understand and acknowledge this history.”

It’s a well-known fact that whites would be eating bland food, like plain bread and gruel, if it weren’t for their theft of culinary secrets from people of color, and especially Black folks. That’s precisely why when the whites found out about coffee, it became one of the reasons they decided to victimize and appropriate Black civilization wholesale.

“The first coffees exported to North America and Europe were harvested by slaves,” Johnson wrote. “Later, enslaved Africans prepared and served coffees for their slave owners, when they were not laboring in the fields.”

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.

“As we trace the bean that started in Africa and spread throughout the world, slave ships departed West Africa to put in place forced labor to ensure an adequate supply of production to meet demand,” Johnson said. “As demand for coffee grew during this period, so did enslavement, which was used to sustain production.”

Urnex, maker of coffee equipment, agrees:

White supremacy is built into the foundation of the coffee industry. The global coffee economy was created through colonialism, the white supremacist system under which European countries invaded, subjugated, and exploited the countries of Black and Brown people. After Dutch spies stole coffee from Africa, Europeans forced Black and Indigenous people into slavery to grow it on colonized land.

White folks drinking coffee perpetuates gentrification and racism

Folks are often countersignaling racism with the old “I like my coffee as I like my men: Black,” but coffee itself is one of the most problematic aspects of the white supremacist capitalist system.

Now that it’s been established that, historically, coffee is deeply rooted in colonialism and racism, you might be wondering what the next steps are. Aren’t we all addicted to the stuff? What do we do with our horrible knowledge?

If you think coffee culture can find refuge in specialty coffee, think again. This might be obvious to some, but I’ll spell it out for the folks in the back: the bourgeois notion of “specialty coffee” is explicitly rooted in classism, which is directly linked to racism (a whole other, and very long, topic).

It’s not just that Black folks cannot afford specialty coffee, but the very acceptance of the term “specialty coffee” suggests that some coffee is somehow superior to others, an idea that is rooted in whiteness. Values like “hard work creates better products” is an white supremacist idea that is constantly forced upon people of color and justifies stereotypes like the myth of “laziness” in people of color.

If you can’t turn to specialty coffee, at least you can support your local coffee shop, right? Again, hold on. The number one sign of gentrification of Black spaces and Black places is a new chic coffee shop. According to Bitterroot Magazine: “These shops seem to sprout on the corner of every neighborhood just as it’s beginning to gentrify — a phenomenon researchers are beginning to notice, too.”

And let’s not forget that so-called progressive coffee shops fail to pay a living wage. The average salary for a barista in Portland, OR is a measly $23,000. To put it short: think twice before entering your local anti-capitalist coffee shop. Despite their anarchist demagoguery, they’re trying to exploit people of color just like the 19th century colonialists.

That’s not to mention big retail coffee and coffee chains, which are just as bad as crypto-racist coffee shops in gentrified areas. At least white liberals pretend to be tolerant of us — Black folks are not even allowed to use restrooms in big coffee chains, as I’m sure you’ll remember from this tragic 2018 Starbucks story:

Two Black men who had not yet ordered anything were denied the code to use the bathroom and then were asked to leave the store. They did not, the manager called the police, and at the end of it all two black men were handcuffed and detained for several hours.

It’s time to boycott and divest

Unfortunately, coffee is not the only racist drink on the market. Milk also became racist after white supremacists began using the white drink as a symbol of their skin. Yes, racist roots in the coffee industry are certainly much deeper, but the whiteness of milk and milk’s devastating effects on the beautiful Black body makes it almost as bad as coffee for some Black people.

So, if both milk and coffee are racist, what can be done? Many people will insist that combining the two drinks actually cancels out the racism, because it represents the white becoming pregnant with Blackness, and creating a delicious Brown result. This is why antiracist folks often take milk in their coffee — a subconscious purifying ritual.

But ultimately, and I know this will hurt, a proper commitment to doing antiracist direct action requires that we give up coffee altogether. Unless you’re Ethiopian.

Sorry, Afrunauts! While 85% of you are wonderful people, the other 25% were far too frequently brigades and troll farms. Their abusive comments have traumatized our moderators, and so we can't allow comments until we have built an ethical way to address the troll problem. If you feel the calling and you have familiarized yourself with what is and isn't free speech, you can still email us your scribbles. If your feedback is excellent, we may manually add it!
PS. The A Black Woman Is Speaking mug is a standing invitation to sit down, shut up, and engage in the wisdom shared by Black women. Lord knows the world needs it right now.

42 thoughts on “<span class="entry-title-primary">Is coffee racist? How drinking coffee perpetuates white supremacy</span> <span class="entry-subtitle">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.</span>”

  1. OMG! what liberal bullshit. stop with the petty whining. black folks are amateurs at the racism game. and that bullshit about black building the pyramids,,,,,,,,have none of you read the old testament? us jews built them. and while we are on that subject we have been the most hated, and enslaved people ever! we were slaves way before it was fashionable, again check out the old testament. you dont hear us jews sniveling about everything. grow up and get over it

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  2. What in Davy Jones’ locker did ye just bark at me, ye scurvy bilgerat? I’ll have ye know I be the meanest cutthroat on the seven seas, and I’ve led numerous raids on fishing villages, and raped over 300 wenches. I be trained in hit-and-run pillaging and be the deadliest with a pistol of all the captains on the high seas. Ye be nothing to me but another source o’ swag. I’ll have yer guts for garters and keel haul ye like never been done before, hear me true. You think ye can hide behind your newfangled computing device? Think twice on that, scallywag. As we parley I be contacting my secret network o’ pirates across the sea and yer port is being tracked right now so ye better prepare for the typhoon, weevil. The kind o’ monsoon that’ll wipe ye off the map. You’re sharkbait, fool. I can sail anywhere, in any waters, and can kill ye in o’er seven hundred ways, and that be just with me hook and fist. Not only do I be top o’ the line with a cutlass, but I have an entire pirate fleet at my beck and call and I’ll damned sure use it all to wipe yer arse off o’ the world, ye dog. If only ye had had the foresight to know what devilish wrath your jibe was about to incur, ye might have belayed the comment. But ye couldn’t, ye didn’t, and now ye’ll pay the ultimate toll, you buffoon. I’ll shit fury all over ye and ye’ll drown in the depths o’ it. You’re fish food now.

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  3. I’m tired of all this black racist trash. You always read in history how the slaves were brought here and dozens of other places after being auctioned at slave markets. True. But those slaves were sold to those markets by the village chiefs and that was their major source of income. Black on black crime?

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  4. “White folks drinking coffee perpetuates gentrification and racism”. Ridiculous. The racists who wrote this article are the same people who think only Mexicans can eat tacos.

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  5. I thought this website was a joke, but now I’m not sure. Like, maybe it’s a Russian propaganda website to try to ramp up division in the west, but the footer says it’s an Amazon affiliate? God, help me find clarity.

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  6. Imagine the conversation that prompted this article:

    JB: I’m bored with all the standard racialistic/white supremacist tropes. We need to come up with something new.

    AS: I’ve got it! Coffee!! Let’s make white people drinking coffee a racist act designed to perpetuate their notions of supremacy.

    JB: Brilliant! We can begin by asserting that every facet of the coffee industry is rooted in racism.

    AS: Perfect. It will practically write itself.

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  7. Dear fellow white people the fact that white peoples can not see how drinks such as tea and coffee intrinsically abuse the Black bodies used to farm their ingredients is outrageous but is typical of the white supremacist christian centric society it’s so important to dismantle and deconstruct.

    As a white person I too am guilty of exploiting Black peoples through drinking their labor and discarding the plastic cup but am working hard on deconstructing my own internal racism as this is just another example of how white peoples very existence is an imperial aggression over Black and Indigenous people.

    I’m glad some fellow white people were able to see this and pen such a beautiful article dismantling the whites supremacist racist system.

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  8. This is one of those cases where I’m left unable to tell if this is some extreme satire, or if whoever wrote this article is genuinely *this* retarded. If it is the latter, then, dear writers, you should be ashamed of yourselves and immediately end your pathetic lives.

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  9. This is the stupidest thing I ever read, have modern liberals undergone brainwashing or something, theres no way people are this stupid to think drinking caffine is racist or when a male looks down at his pee pee and thinks their a woman…

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    • Oh my gosh… Can an article be anymore stupid.

      You seriously need to get a life.

      I’m a black African guy born in Zimbabwe Africa, and lived most of my life in England UK and I really don’t know where your head is at..

      I have to ask a really important question..

      Are you saying that every white person, Chinese person, Indian person etc that drinks coffee is a racist.

      As for coffee being made by black people for black people..
      I guess all those black businesses that sell coffee to white businesses or white people are sell outs.

      If I was you I’d retract this article because It is as close to hate speach as you can get.

      I’m sure you had the best intentions but this isn’t 1950s America where black people are second class citizens have to sit at the back of a bus, or not allowed to sit on a whites only bench in the park.

      Reply
  10. “Many people will insist that combining the two drinks actually cancels out the racism, because it represents the white becoming pregnant with Blackness, and creating a delicious Brown result.”

    Omg… You need psychiatric support. Its both hilarious and sad what’s happening in your brain

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  11. What are we doing here?
    I am familiar with things like AHC (when it was good) and do see the humour,
    but i doubt most people do, and many probably don’t understand what they are reading, especially if they are just passing through.
    It worries me, and I doubt your ultimate objective is to entertain, rather to shift opinion by having the articles shared and discussed on youtube and other social media, as showcase of “the other side”.

    The fact that most a lot of people have trouble differentiating obvious satire from legitimate news has me worried that what you are doing here will prove extremely effective.

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    • Dear fellow white people the fact that white peoples can not see how drinks such as tea and coffee intrinsically abuse the Black bodies used to farm their ingredients is outrageous but is typical of the white supremacist christian centric society it’s so important to dismantle and deconstruct.

      As a white person I too am guilty of exploiting Black peoples through drinking their labor and discarding the plastic cup but am working hard on deconstructing my own internal racism as this is just another example of how white peoples very existence is an imperial aggression over Black and Indigenous people.

      I’m glad some fellow white people were able to see this and pen such a beautiful article dismantling the whites supremacist racist system.

      Reply
  12. I’m a black liberal, and this is the most idiotic reach I’ve ever seen attempted. Delete this article and stay out of black folks business. You’re not helping.

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  13. Reading this just makes me feel like opening a coffee shop named “Pure black slave coffee beans”. Just to make these kind of idiots even angrier, for no reason at all.

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    • Well done you are doing exactly what this dumb ass site wants you to do get angry at obvious made up shit this site is litteraly just satire designed to make conservatives anger and seeming you guys can never distinguish between what’s fake and what’s real no wonder you all for it and of course you just had to be racist

      Reply
  14. This is the biggest crock of shit I have ever read. Hilarious too,
    “This is why antiracist folks often take milk in their coffee — a subconscious purifying ritual.” Sure, all five of them in your dorm. Even if I was compelled to do as such, I wouldn’t because many people who are not black are lactose intolerant and/or don’t like milk.

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  15. What an idiotic article.

    First off the slave trade in Africa was run by Arabs. Africans caught in the west of Africa would be shipped to west however the 18 odd million slaves captured in the east, including around Ethiopia, all ended up in arab lands. The reason there’s no remnant of them is that the males where castrated

    Coffee came to Europe via the Arabs and turks who accessed it centuries before the Europeans did. Do some research about arab and turkish colonialism in africa from 7th century onwards.

    All this article does is expose the ludicrous, illogical and poorly informed hatred of white people.

    Grow up Jamey Braunstein & Alissa Silverst

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  16. this article made me think and feel about all the hardworking indigenous people of colour who have to toil in coffee farms picking the berries. so i’ve decided that cutting back on coffee will save me an unnecessary expense and also stop me from participating in a racist, exploitative industry. it’s a win-win. i hope that billions of others can also do this, so that over time, those who pick coffee berries will no longer have such a hard job, which will free them to do something easier and more profitable, like making tiktok videos.

    Reply
    • Sing it, queen. In my neighborhood in Brooklyn a lot of the businesses that were infecting the place with white supremacy closed down. Now more Black and Latinx people are living outside of the capitalist system in a much more traditional lifestyle. Some of them even sit on the sidewalk chanting to their ancestral gods. It’s very spiritual.

      Reply
  17. Shut the actual fuck up. You stupid fucks can’t possibly believe everything is racist. That’s completely fucking retarded.

    It’s a shame you retards have such an amazingly easy life that you can view absolutely everything through the lens of “race”.

    Go move to the Middle East. Just go.

    Reply
  18. Well said! As a white person aware on my privileges, I couldn’t agree more on this well deserved ban on coffee. I don’t like white supremacy, and I don’t want drinking it either!

    Reply

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