I've Got Bad News For Fans of This Anti-Racist Beer: It Is Most Definitely Racist
A Ku Klux Klan designed beer is being removed from a Connecticut bar after receiving complaints from customers on social media, according to CTPost.
In a Facebook post, a woman said the $40 bottle was promoted to her black husband at World of Beer, a bar in Connecticut. Erika Davis-Pitre said her husband was given the bottle without being warned about its appearance.
"Presenting this packaging to any customer, let alone a Black customer, is insensitive at best or just downright racist," she wrote.
Yellow Belly beer, a "bold and outspoken" imperial stout, according to its creators, is packaged to resemble a KKK hood. The design is meant to depict "cowardice" in the company's stance against extremism and racism, according to the beer's origin story.
Full story here.
There’s a rule of thumb I generally follow to avoid being cancelled, or any number of icky consequences, and that’s if something is dressed in a klan hood- it’s probably racist. Shame on the beer company but then again if they want to dress their barley soda up as a racist redneck, who am I to tell them that’s not their mistake to make.
The real idiots in this store are the employees of this bar. You’ve got to give the europeans a break. They’ve got a complicated relationship with racism, being that they’re on one hand, incredibly racist with a long, long history of colonizing and enslaving people of color, while on the other hand, they are not American- which these days kind of counts for something. You know but it is really one thing to see this on a shelf in Luton (british capital of bar fighting) and think, “wow, what an audacious move,” and serving this beer in Connecticut. Connecticut. There’s a few places you might, undeservedly, get away with serving your klan beer. Connecticut is not on that short list. I’m not one who says it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
That is unless you’re debating dressing up your beer as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, then you should be safe… or sorry… or whatever convinces you not to do that.
p.s. I love when beer companies describe a drink with words like “bold and outspoken”- coincidentally what the slightly racist old people in my hometown called the really racist old people!
p.p.s. I don’t care how bold your beer is, if you’re on the marketing team at Yellow Belly Beer you are DESPERATELY trying to rebrand as Casper the Friendly Ghost.
