More racial woes at Starbucks
I thought this was some sort of joke at first, mainly because I’d never heard the word “beaner” as a slur against Mexicans:
Nearly two weeks ahead of their day of nationwide racial bias training, coffee chain Starbucks is facing new accusations of racism after a Latino customer discovered a racial slur written on his coffee order.
A Latino man named Peter received a cold coffee drink labeled “BEANER.”
“En espaé±ol es ”˜frijoleros’, ”˜beaner,’ you know, in English,” said the victim’s friend Miguel Acosta.
“He went to Starbucks, and they asked for his name, and his name is ”˜Peter,’ and they wrote this ”˜beaner,’ Acosta told CBS2 News through a coworker who was translating. “And he’s saying that’s not fair.”
But hey, you learn something new every day, and today I learned that “beaner” can indeed be used that way:
Beaner is derogatory slang for Mexicans or people of Mexican descent. The term originates from the prevalence of pinto beans and other beans in Mexican cuisine…
It appears that the term may be going through a phase of melioration, where the negative connotation of an ethnic slur is “reclaimed” by those against whom it is directed and used in a neutral or even positive manner.
It seems that Peter isn’t interested in “reclaiming” beaner, though.
I have three things to say about the incident.
The first is that in any organization as large as Starbucks, with as many employees as it has, of course there are going to be incidents in which an employee does something wrong or behaves badly. Real racism exists. No company is immune, and each incident can be handled on its own merits without making a federal case out of it or needing to boycott the business—although in today’s social media frenzy, that’s exactly what people want to do.
The second is that quite a few of these incidents turn out to be hoaxes. This one may or may not be.
The third is that there is a simple explanation that might even be true. It is connected—strangely enough—to the post I just put up a few minutes ago, before I had ever seen this “beaner” story. If Peter’s friend Acosta is any indication, Peter may have said the name “Peter” with an accent (can I say that without being racist?). The Starbucks employee taking the order may have heard something that sounded to him or her like “beaner,” and thought it was Peter’s name, because the two words really do sound quite a bit alike. In addition, maybe (like me) the employee had never heard the word “beaner” used as a pejorative. The whole thing may have been an innocent mistake.
But we’re not allowed to have innocent mistakes anymore.
“Beaner” had fallen out of usage in my childhood/teens, although you could still hear older folks throw it down. Like “greaser”, “beaner” had been replaced by the much more hot-button words “spic” & “wetback.”
But then I got called “cracker” & “honky” so often it was hard to keep track.
This smells like an accidental “accent” issue & a set-up by someone who wants their 2 minutes of hate.
I’m guessing you’ve not spent much time out West.
I am offended by people who are offended by every little thing.
Sam L.:
On the contrary, I have spent a ton of time out west, In California mostly, both northern and southern.
I lived in LA for a year in the mid-70s. What’s more, just about every single year since 1970 to the present, I have gone to California for extended stays of between two weeks and two months at a time (I have a lot of relatives and friends there). I take my computer and I work from there. I have stayed for lengthy times in northern California and southern, with trips all over the state.
I’ve never heard the word used. I don’t doubt it is used, I’ve just never heard of it before.
A friend of mine is from California, and I first heard “beaner” from her. She advised me that it was a derogatory term . . . although she might have used it herself a few times, in anger, when Mexicans took over the once-nice suburban neighborhood she had just bought a house in, and made life for her and every Anglo in the neighborhood unliveable .
“The Morning After” directed by Sidney Lumet starring Jeff Bridges and Jane Fonda, released 1986. One of many decent films about alcoholics and memorable for being one of the first films where Fonda’s character looks bad and over-the-hill.
Bridges, an alcoholic PI who lost his LA cop job and family to the booze, tells Fonda in their first meeting “Yer beaners, they tend to do …” and Fonda immediately retorts, “MY BEANERS?”
______
We’re supposed to believe that an LA area barista would write such slang on a cup because it would uniquely identify the patron??
There’s likely to be a mundane explanation for this. But even if the barrista is an idiot, it doesn’t matter. It’s a stupid thing that isn’t newsworthy.
But it seems to me that if you set yourselves up as a great SJW champion, then you are going to be scrutinized in this way.
It doesn’t bother me in the least that Starbucks is getting a lot of bad press over these things.
More made up BS.
It certainly was common in Chicago in the ’70s and ’80s, but I don’t think I’ve heard it used in about 30 years. When I lived in Texas soccer was called, “beanerball” to distinguish it from American football. I am half Polish and had a lot of folks throw derogatory terms at me. Many were good friends. It was just the way we talked. My own father, who is not Polish, would even make fun of Poles in my presence. Everyone was “something” in my old neighborhood.
“Beaner” is the equivalent of “limey” or “kraut,” it’s in reference to common cuisine of an ethnic group. I have no idea why it would offend anyone who didn’t choose to be offended. It’s all so silly.
However, I agree that this almost certainly was a mishearing based on an accent. Unless the barista is 50 or older I doubt anyone would choose “beaner” as an ethnic epithet in 2018.
And multiple employees of a Cheesecake Factory can verbally assault and threaten battery towards a black customer who wears a MAGA hat and the media barely makes mention.
According to this piece, the customer said his name was Pedro, not Peter. If so, that makes it less likely the Starbucks person thought he might have said “Beaner”.
There’s also a photo of a cup with the “Beaner” label in that article.
neo,
‘Out West’ means places like the Dakotas and New Mexico and Arizona.
Yes, it is accurate to say California is in the western part of the United States.
However, those of us deplorables living in flyover country consider LA to be politically and culturally a giant suburb of NYC with really nice weather.
I’m surprised you never heard Cheech and Chong’s sort of hit song “Beaners” it got a fair amount of air play when their movie came out.
When I was stationed at Ft. Carson in the early 80s my tank commander was from Mexico, my Gunner was Puerto Rican, my Driver was from El Salvador and I was the loader fresh from the cornfields of Iowa. My TC attempted to name the tank Beaner Buggy but the CO vetoed it before the paint was dry. Crewing that tank was an eye opener, especially the arguments about who spoke the purest Spanish. I learned a few words and phrases that my high school Spanish teacher somehow left out of the curriculum.
I agree with a few of the others here who’ve commented on the latest Starbucks tragedy.
Neo hasn’t heard the word “beaner,” because she didn’t grow up on the southern plains seventy years or so ago. She’s just too damn young and untraveled.
More and more, I treasure my ignorance.
Growing up in the Southwest, anything West of i-35, South of I-70 but ending somewhere before the California border I knew a whole lot of a whole lot of slang, derogatory terms for Mexicans, Blacks and American (feather) Indians. I had to go off to college to find out that there were unacceptable bad names for Jewish people, Poles, Czechs, Italians, Hungarians and even Scandinavians, who knew.
At the same time, especially in the Army, we would tease our friends who were different and they felt free to tease us back. “Texas, there’s only steers and queers in Texas and I don’t see no horns on you”, and more of that stuff. I think it was a guy thing and the closer the bond in a particular group of soldiers the raunchier and cruder the insults because we knew we would take care of each other. And all that stuff.
And there’s the military/bro connection–back in the day (the early ’80s) as long as we avoided the really offensive stuff (the “N” word) ethnic slanging was OK in the Army. I got my share of “peckerwood” jokes and got in a few of my own. The reaction? We laughed and then got down to work. No harm, no foul. Jeez, I miss those days….
I learned a few words and phrases that my high school Spanish teacher somehow left out of the curriculum.
I’m sure you did. 🙂
I have been called “mojado (wetback),” in an affectionate way, by Hispanics in Houston because of my command of Spanish. Regarding “native” accent, difficult to say because my accent reflected all the countries I had worked in.
Some years later, I was living next to a city park. Some illegal aliens had turned the park into a party place, leaving mattresses and beer cans/bottles in the park after their weekend meetings. I did not like this.
I used a magic marker to leave a strongly worded message in Spanish on a mattress. It went something like this, in translation: “This is a park, not a garbage dump. If you don’t want to clean up after yourselves, go back to Mexico, you sh*** wetbacks.”
The next time I was in the park, the mattresses and beer bottles/cans had been taken away. Apparently my blunt message got through.
from Chicago area, and I’ve heard of that term(beaner) for at least 30 years.
Was in a Starbucks the other day, a minority walked up to the counter asked for a glass of water.
The thought of going into a starbucks for a glass of water never has crossed my mind. It was maybe 60 degrees.
Im not saying, I’m just saying.
Peter’s, or Pedro’s, response to this incident is to grab an English speaking friend and go to the news media with the complaint? Why not confront the person that wrote it, ask for an explanation? And if “Beaner” isn’t his name why did he assume the cup was his? When I’m asked for my name I say, Steve, and wouldn’t pick up a cup that said “Pasty Old White Guy”.
I’m with Parker on this topic.
Peter plainly said “Yanny” and nothing will make me believe otherwise!
A chain coffee shop that was meant to compete with Starbucks opened up a few years back called “Beaners”; which made sense because it obviously referred to coffee beans and roasts and may have had landscape images ( I don’t quite recall) of spilled coffee beans to highlight it in their signage.
I stopped in a couple times. Then the name disappeared and it became “Bixbies” or something. I asked why and the guy behind the counter said that they had found out that the name was considered offensive to some people as it had the same sound an ethnic slur.
Ha!!!
https://www.biggby.com/beaners-coffee-to-rebrand-as-biggby-coffee/
I’m sick of the overuse of the term racism.
There is no Mexican race.
I’m even sicker of Germans like Vicente Fuchs and conquistadors of Spanish Inquisition stock like Eva Longoria claiming to speak for all Mexicans
Have you heard Norwegians called Squareheads?
Earliest instance I’ve seen was by Pat O’Brien in “Bureau Of Missing Persons” in ’33.
Rufus Says:
May 17th, 2018 at 6:13 pm
And multiple employees of a Cheesecake Factory can verbally assault and threaten battery towards a black customer who wears a MAGA hat and the media barely makes mention.
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Indeed.
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Surellin Says:
May 18th, 2018 at 7:26 am
Peter plainly said “Yanny” and nothing will make me believe otherwise!
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LOL
(and, if you say it fast, it sounds like Laurel)
I am persuaded that the Barista had no clue about the alleged slur, IF the name was actually printed on the cup by her, and not by a hoaxer in search of headlines.
I am also reminded of the Washington Redskins (manufactured) controversy, where very few Native Americans objected to the name, but the LWGMN (liberal white guilt media network) did all the whining.
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Harold Says:
May 17th, 2018 at 7:08 pm
… My TC attempted to name the tank Beaner Buggy but the CO vetoed it before the paint was dry.
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Most ethnic groups have no problem with using “derogatory” language among themselves, or with friends (cf the war stories above); and then there is this case:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/19/533514196/the-slants-win-supreme-court-battle-over-bands-name-in-trademark-dispute
“Members of the Asian-American rock band The Slants have the right to call themselves by a disparaging name, the Supreme Court says, in a ruling that could have broad impact on how the First Amendment is applied in other trademark cases….The band has said it wanted to reclaim what is often seen as a slur.”
So what you’re saying is I can puke now. Because I’ve really wanted to vomit for a long time.
None of the beaners on my crew would waste their money at Starbucks- I used to bring thermos coffee for everyone.