kanesrealm

Yes, yes, yes, cut, edit out the rest, play on a loop lose our minds and call it a day. President Barack Obama discussed race relations in a podcast interview over the weekend. He said it  wasn't enough that we have simply decided it's bad to use the "N" word publicly. He's right and there's nothing wrong with him using the word in the context in which he used it. Some folks seem to be apoplectic or at least slightly upset. My advice is get over it. That word exists and it is used in a variety of ways. I find it disgusting and reprehensible but that doesn't make it go away. It would be nice if it simply faded away but it won't. What brought this discussion is of course the mass murders in Charleston. Nine African Americans gunned down in their church for no other reason than the color of their skin. The monster who did this is an evil racist bastard plain and simple, call him what he is. If you accept that there are good people in the world then yo...

Starbucks Race Together campaign has come to an end after one long week of less than enthusiastic support from their customers. No doubt the founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, had the best intentions with the campaign. He was advised by some in his company that it was a bad idea, he went forward anyway. He should absolutely encourage conversations about race and use his public soap box as a major corporate C.E.O. The failure of the idea is really quite simple and it has nothing to do with race. Schultz envisions Starbucks as some kind of community center, it most certainly is not. It is a huge corporation with thousands of locations which had an expansion blueprint in the beginning that was about coming to a community saturating it with multiple locations and crushing the independent coffee shops. Not that all of those independents were worth saving, but that legacy is remembered. Starbucks is a busy place with most customers zooming in and out, that's why many of their locat...

Is there no refuge from controversy? Starbucks has started a campaign asking it's baristas to write on your cup "race together" and apparently try to engage you in a conversation about this subject. I love coffee, it's literally a part of my morning ritual. I don't love Starbucks, the coffee not the company or it's agents. When I go there it's for the free WiFi and an Americano. By the way I always insist on a real cup for my beverage so how will they handle this? Will they say here's you're Americano and what do you think of the state of race relations in our country? I don't want to talk about anything. I just want to drink my coffee, surf the web and maybe blog about how bitter and overpriced Starbucks is. Seriously, why are they putting this kind of pressure on their employees? The baristas bust their ass and are very busy trying to please the unpleasable. I can understand Starbucks as a company wanting to address this issue internally a...