On coffee's McCarthy era part 1
The empire has always been why coffee was proliferated and mass-produced. Coffee professionals just seemed more interested in talking about it when it was abstract.
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The jasmine outside my friend’s house in the Mission District is thick with aroma this spring. The flowers themselves are bunched in a wide pattern, dots of yellow and stems of pink purple. Just stepping outside the door is enough to get a nose full of delicate sweetness, like a slice of white cake.
It’s a strange juxtaposition to every time I pull out my phone.
Opening to the NPR or the Guardian, dystopic headlines splatter the screen. Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, thrown into an unmarked van in New York only to be railroaded to a favorable judge in Louisiana while his pregnant wife could do nothing but watch the devastation unfold. Three European and one United States citizen in Berlin told they’re to be deported for protesting in support of Palestine. German criminal defense and migration lawyer Alexander Gorski told NPR its the first time the political concept staatsräson — the “unconditional solidarity of Germany with the state of Israel” — has been used as a legal concept rather than as a political one.
To make the media intake the stranger, a friend recommended the Lolita Podcast. It’s a 10-episode deep dive into the meta-narrative and context surrounding Vladimir Nabokov’s book. The larger point (I’ve learned, as I’ve never read the book) is to illustrate that it is not a love story like many white men chewing on their fountain pens might think. It’s a book about crimes perpetrated upon a child by their caregiver.
Good times.
Still, the podcast. The basic idea of counter-narration regarding something allegedly understood by everyone who encounters the thing in question is important. In the podcast, host Jamie Loftus tells readers that Nabokov’s 1955 work was censored and brought under intense scrutiny thanks, in part, to the McCarthyism of the time. Her point is that rather than naming the despicable subject of the book within its many big-budget movie and stage adaptations, it was easier — and safer for directors, actors, and producers — to say the content of the work was simply about star-crossed love.
I haven’t read the book and even I know a child can’t consent to an adult. Imagine my surprise in learning the fictional intro to the book explains the entire novel is a written diary by a man jailed for these crimes. The villainous protagonist intends to submit this account to the jurors on his trial. Yet, the legacy of Lolita is about how young vixens seduce well-to-do men and the entanglements of a society that simply doesn’t understand (Loftus points out that we can thank Lana del Rey for a lot of that fresh round of misconception.)
Rather than the smell of jasmine, I considered the bottomless aroma of coffee. McCarthyism maps here, too, not for its fundamental misunderstandings but for the industry’s current failings.
As of this writing, numerous specialty players are taking buy-outs and headed for the hills. One of my personal favorite businesses Black & White Coffee Roasters in North Carolina was acquired in April 2025 by FairWave Specialty Coffee Collective, a private equity firm from Kansas City. Founder and visible Important Person in coffee Lem Butler is leaving the company. Sightglass Coffee’s founders Justin and Jerad Morrison made way for former Starbucks big wig Sharon Healy in spring 2024. No one has mentioned, to me personally or in any of the online spaces I spend time in, these decisions as concerning. Moreover, there has been no mention of the new administration’s intimidation tactics to citizens (these companies are based in the U.S.) and no mention of the ongoing genocidal push inside Gaza. I only saw scant support for mention of Coffee People for Palestine, launched Monday, April 14 to raise money for the aid redistribution operation Sameer Project.
I haven’t worked in the upper ranks of a coffee company and even I know one can choose to make a stand in the workplace. Imagine my surprise in a coffee grading course at Oakland’s Royal Coffee a few years back when a fellow classmate told me any “virtue signaling” in coffee gets away from the important stuff: quality. This dedication to craft, technological improvements, and cafe aesthetics above all else is one of the main tenants of coffee’s McCarthy era.
Lauren Michele Jackson’s “The White Lies of Craft Culture” in 2017 should be required reading at every cutesy coffee shop and minimal third wave-lookin shop. Getting really into something, discussing the love of Stronghold roasters at the 2025 US Barista Championship, these are not sins. Doing so with no recognition of the historical context of that thing, and especially no ability to perceive the perils of that thing in its present context (which would hopefully guide a curious, caring person to the origins of said moment), is shameful.
This is not applicable to anyone who drinks coffee. That’s like saying one needs to understand the finer inner mechanics of OPEC when gassing the truck. This is applicable to coffee professionals, enthusiasts, and their communities. This is for those spending countless hours a day practicing latte art and flying to the Specialty Coffee Association’s Expo trade show in Houston with no acknowledgement of larger contexts, no knowledge of Chilean Starbucks workers securing contract victories — and how and why that is important and possible in their own country. Writer Fionn Pooler continues to be on top of understanding the going-ons of modern coffee with the histories and commitments with which we must contend.
These Reddit debates between Kalita and V60 drain times are perilous. They claim to be the actual present and actual future for the industry. In Drift magazine’s Los Angeles issue, actual coffee professionals — the same who are not naming names in these worsening global and political conditions — are pushing for fourth, fifth, and even sixth coffee waves. Their definitions are, so far, based on technological improvements, domestic production. I and others have argued for a fourth wave based on producing countries and communities taking the reins of production themselves. To be fair, other Drift issues have platformed such conversations, such as those in the Indonesia issue with roaster Seniman Coffee Studio.
Here’s the rub: modern coffee professionals — especially those working in specialty but increasingly thanks to market pressures just about everyone who wants to keep making money — say they are in coffee to better farmer livelihoods. It’s about creating community. It’s about making the best damn fine cup of coffee I can, gosh darn it, a humble smile creeping in. These bedrock claims are coffee’s second McCarthy era tenant: it is easier, and safer, to wave toward basic well-wishing than to do or so anything of progressive substance in the industry.
More next week.
Honestly, I think one of the main reasons people in coffee don’t speak up — especially owners or folks in leadership — is because they’re scared it’ll hurt the business. Like, we want to support causes and speak out on injustice, but there’s always this lingering fear: What if customers walk away? What if wholesale accounts drop us? What if we get labeled “difficult” by the industry?
Coffee is already a low-margin, high-risk business. Most people running cafes or roasteries are just trying to survive month to month. So I think there’s this pressure to play it safe — to post latte art instead of Palestine, or to celebrate new gear instead of calling out injustice. Not because people don’t care, but because they worry about the consequences.
At the same time, that silence has a cost too. It sends a message — intentional or not — that these issues aren’t worth naming. And that’s hard to sit with when we constantly say things like “coffee is about people” or “we care about producers.” If we only care when it’s convenient or profitable, that’s not really care — that’s branding.
I don’t think everyone needs to have a perfect political statement at the ready. But if we’re building community, we need space to have these conversations, even if they’re messy. And maybe we also need to talk more honestly about the risks — and the responsibility — of being in a position where your platform could make a difference.
there’s a naive and persistent belief in the industry that morally sound practices will lead to higher quality, e.g. small, non-corporate coffee farms care more about the product and not the profit; sustainable practices will result in tastier coffee; the homogenization of corporatization is at odds with the idiosyncrasy of coffee’s terroir expression; higher compensation in supply chains and FOB costs will lead to better paid farmers and thus better tasting coffee.
this idea is reflected in the California farm-to-table ethos, too: organic, small farm produce is thought to be both ethically better and more tasty than the corporate farm alternatives.
while that doesn’t cover everything you’re talking about (and while i think this belief is often true!) i think it’s an implicit belief in specialty coffee that we as a community can work to make more explicit. companies like SEY are okay at this, being ultra-transparent about FOB costs, etc, but it feels like an afterthought in their slick marketing approach.