Seen on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/OrwellNGoode/status/1309236208690659334
I had to look up the book, it’s real.
Beer and Racism: How Beer Became White, Why It Matters, and the Movements to Change It (Sociology of Diversity)
It’s on Amazon for preorder, the release date is October 14th.
This is the description:
Beer in the United States has always been bound up with race, racism, and the construction of white institutions and identities. Given the very quick rise of craft beer, as well as the myopic scholarly focus on economic and historical trends in the field, there is an urgent need to take stock of the intersectional inequalities that such realities gloss over. This unique book carves a much-needed critical and interdisciplinary path to examine and understand the racial dynamics in the craft beer industry and the popular consumption of beer.
The lead author, Nathanial Chapman wrote an article for an online magazine Consume This! which I suspect gives a preview for their book.
The craft beer industry and culture also has a race problem. As Anderson[5] observes, the modern craft brewery is a predominantly “white space”. While women represent a growing segment of craft drinkers, people of color, particularly African Americans, have not seen a rise in consumption. Dating back to the 1960s, the beer industry marketed malt liquor (a beverage viewed to be inferior to regular beer and characterized by higher alcohol contents and large format bottles) and other “less-than” beers to the African American community. Today, the marketing of some craft labels resorts to appropriation of African American culture. A popular brewery in Torrance, CA Monkish is known for using rap lyrics as names for their beers. In a recent interview, the late Anthony Bourdain lamented that craft beer culture as nothing more than a bunch of hipsters writing tasting notes and listening to 90s hip hop. African Americans are not represented in the industry either. Currently, there are fewer than 50 African American-owned breweries operating in the US. Given the rapid growth in the industry, and the sheer number of breweries opening each year, this is a tremendously disproportionate representation in the industry. This has trickled down to the culture as well. Less than two percent of craft beer is consumed by African Americans, a growing problem for a craft culture that promotes the idea that beer is without race or gender.
Apparently bemoaning the lack of diversity in the craft beer industry is more popular than the IPA trend.
Thrillist did an article on this too:
There Are Almost No Black People Brewing Craft Beer. Here’s Why.
Nearly all craft beer brewers started out as craft beer drinkers, so it stands to reason that if there are to be black brewers, there would have to be black drinkers.
Turns out the latter are few and far between. A recent Nielsen study commissioned by the Brewers Association found that while black drinkers compose 11.2% of the US population, they consume only 3.7% of the country’s craft beer.
So it’s worth asking: why has the overall American beer industry always been white?
I dunno, maybe it’s because beer, as we know it in America, is the product of German, Irish, and English immigrants who brought their respective brewing styles to this country. The drink we know as beer, using malted grains and hops, comes from central Europe. Even the word beer, comes from the German “bier,” which is middle-High German.
But don’t worry, the author is going to blame racism. Not that there are any signs hanging outside craft breweries that say “no colored people allowed.” It’s that there isn’t perfect representation in the craft brewing industry and that is enough evidence of racism.
It’s important to note that no one I spoke with for this story claimed or even hinted that the enthusiasm gap between white and black consumer bases was driven by racism. Instead, the takeaway of many of these conversations boiled down to a simple fact: craft beer is white because the overall American beer industry has always been white.
So for the most part, black people don’t even care about craft beer. They are happy without it. So why give a shit?
Here’s where I’m going to make us all uncomfortable. Should we, the white craft beer majority, care that black people don’t partake in the culture we love? If craft beer is indeed “white people shit,” and black people are cool with that, then what’s the harm, right? Isn’t this all just a big, foamy glass of white guilt masquerading as a beer story?
Yes, yes it is. This is what these fucking people do. Black people don’t seem to be terribly upset that they aren’t represented in craft beer. So this is just some guy who wants to find something people are enjoying and fucking ruin it for everyone because he’s got nothing better to do.
That’s it exactly. Go find a therapist and figure out another way to live.
I don’t think so. There are two major downsides to allowing craft beer to remain homogeneous.
If craft beer doesn’t prioritize racial diversity in its ranks the way it does product diversity, we’ll eventually wind up with homogenized craft beer. That’s already happening, to a certain extent. Any good craft beer aisle will feature at least a dozen IPAs from a dozen different breweries — but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an African-style sorghum beer. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist, or that all black brewers should or would brew African-style beers, but just imagine all the culinary and brewing traditions we’re missing out on.
Oops. Scratch a progressive, find a racist.
“This is a good beer, but not enough black people were involved in the making of it so I’ll have to give it low marks” is a racist statement.
And yes, he thinks that black people should brew African fermented drinks. What if some white hipster brewed an African sorghum beer? He’d be canceled for cultural appropriation.
The great Progressive conundrum, how to have diversity and segregation at the same time.
If there was actual discrimination in beer or brewing, that would be one thing. But just some progressive feeling that his racial quotas are not being met in a particular subculture and using that to attack the subculture is everything that is wrong with progressivism.
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