Coffee Equity Toolkit Wiki
Coffee Equity Toolkit Wiki

Racism in the coffee industry can manifest in various ways, from overt displays to biased treatment of customers.

Racism is a spectrum and systemic. It shows up as:

  • Giving a more robust interview to a Black woman, because she's not your perceived expectation of what a barista looks like
  • Assuming a Black person at an industry event is a producer
  • In company marketing materials, showing only white hands making coffee
  • Falling into stereotypes: saying that a Latinx woman is just being feisty when she has a legitimate complaint
  • Using race as a punchline in a joke and when criticized, brushing it off as "just a joke"

Examples of racial microaggressions include:

  • Customer questioning ethnicity of barista
  • Manager asking Black employee what it feels like to be Black in the industry (see also: Tokenism)

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