It hardly even needs saying, but white Brits love barista-made coffee (preferably Australian) adorned with elaborate latte art. Willing and able to spend a minimum of £2.50 for a coffee with some warm milk, white Brits are not content with merely drinking their purchase. They need to savour it as if it were a wine degustation, talking about the coffee’s roast, blend, vibrant acidity, floral overtones and sweet aftertaste.
White British “cafficionados” can smell an Ozone or Square Mile roast, well, a mile off. A good way to spot quality cafés is looking at how chummy and pun-tastic the hand-drawn chalkboard outside is. However, take note: once a ‘cult coffee shop’ has been recommended by Time Out it’s time to find a new, more hidden one.
Trying to navigate your way through the difference between flat whites and lattes and macs and piccolos can be tricky. But fear not. All those other white Brits are bluffing too.
Not a fan of coffee? No problem. The myriad choices available are designed to make caffeine palatable to even the most inveterate coffee hater: through all the soya milk, vanilla and amaretto syrup, chocolate, sugar and shedloads of creamy froth, you’ll hardly be able to taste any coffee at all. If even that is too strong for you, try a chai latte – no one needs to know it’s not coffee. What really matters is that you can coo at the pretty shapes in the foam.
The apotheosis of white Brits’ undying love for coffee is the pop-up Shoreditch café #guardiancoffee. Initially dismissed as a Twitter joke, it soon turned out to be a real place where white Brits can indulge their two greatest passions at once: reading the Guardian while drinking a double macchiato.
When people stop defining each other as colours based on skin tone we may begin to live in a better world. This blog engages in perpetuating the myth that skin colour is a defining attribute which separates and divides the human race, encouraging the classification and dehumanization of human beings through national and racial stereotypes.
In the words of Haile Selassie the world will not be free until “the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes”.
Until then keep propagating this kind of racist propaganda. Good luck.
Yes, that is the point I’m also trying to make, by using satire.
Your comment: I am trying to make a point about how middle class liberals (usually white due to massive inherent racism in society, rather than actual racial difference) all like pretty much the same things and are not as original as they think…
Stuff white Brits like comment
You’re satirizing an imagined group of people based on skin colour/nationality, not the process of this classification, the former being predicated upon the latter, and being the premise of your send-up.
Casual racism, seriously, litmus test it with a blog What black Brits like, what Pakistani Brits like etc, espousing stereotypes thinly veiling fear and dislike, in the same tone of writing, and see the reaction. All classifications and separations are false and dehumanising, there are no colours or nationalities in reality, only unique human beings, one people.
Satire takes more thought.
Satire often works by appropriating and imitating the language of the people it is criticising, and therefore showing how flawed their reasoning is.
Obviously not all white British people like this stuff. It’s only a tiny minority of Guardian readers who do. Therein lies (in theory) the humour.