Please, for the love of all that is good, keep this sociocultural and out of the pit!
Black people, as a category, just don’t drink coffee. I feel qualified to make this completely unscientific observation because I’ve worked with a lot of black people on many levels of the socioeconomic spectrum (from small, independent retail to big box stores to the academic world to the corporate office), I have a lot of black friends and associates (I make and sell rap beats on the side), and I worked in a coffee shop for the past year.
That aside - black people just don’t drink coffee. In the same area that a white person will tend to drink coffee - during the afternoon lull in the office, while lecturing a classroom full of students or keeping office hours in a school, while working the early or late shift in a retail job - black people tend to drink sports drinks or sodas. Though I worked in a coffee shop in a busy urban area full of blacks, I could probably count on one hand the black customers that came into the store during that year that I worked there. Even the two black people that worked in the coffee shop with me drank tea or chai instead of coffee.
My black buddy since a child stated that it was just a product of upbringing. His father never drank it so he in turn didn’t. He does drink a metric fuckton of Mountain Dew though.
I’m Black and I don’t drink coffee. Basically because I find the taste repellent and it doesn’t seem to have the intended effect (keeping me alert and awake). I was on a cross country road trip and stopped at a restaurant for a cup of black coffee. Drank it, caught myself nodding off twenty minutes later. Bad taste + a failure to keep me awake = no sale.
In my peer group of graduate students, I do think I’m in the minority. I know tons of Black people who can’t live without their coffee. I can’t say that I have noticed that Black folks don’t drink coffee, but come to think of it, the non-coffee drinkers I know are mostly Black.
There was a black woman who worked in my office, who drank coffee. In fact, she would make pots of coffee with two of the little pre-measured Community Coffee packets, and only she and I would drink it. However, she was from Louisiana. Maybe black people drink coffee there. Or maybe she just liked coffee.
I like coffee, but I can’t stomach it. Literally. I don’t know if it’s the caffeine or what, but that stuff gets my mail moving in the most uncomfortable way.
But my father is the biggest coffee drinker I know.
I don’t drink coffee regularly, but I do enjoy a cup from time to time. But I grew up in a coffee-drinking household and I never seen anything to suggest that my family was unusual.
Would it be crazy to hypothesize a genetic relation here? I know that significant proportions of the population find coffee so bitter as to be undrinkable (my pasty white self included), and I believe that this has been found to be hereditary as well. So, the preference you note could just be due to the presence or absence of this trait in different groups in the population. Of course, given that no population in the modern-day US is really isolated from anywhere else, this would have been more true in the past; current preferences would be more cultural in basis.
It could just be entirely cultural to begin with. Wasn’t coffee something of a luxury, early in American history, and thus more of an upper-class (and therefore “white”) drink?
Here’s a report regarding a study that says African-Americans consume less coffee than white Americans, but that coffee consumption among the A-A population tends to increase after the age of 40.
Community coffee is big in Louisiana. I am from a small town in Louisiana that is about half black and half white. I never noticed that black people didn’t drink coffee at all. Maybe because my momma didn’t drink coffee and I found out why later. That stuff hovers on the line between nasty and OK depending on what you do to it but it isn’t something you would want to seek out.
I am with Hippy Hollow and it has always been a mystery to me. What positive effect does coffee have so that people need it? It makes me jittery but just as tired as ever which is a net negative. I could drink three cups and then pass out but I would feel like hell. I am extremely energetic and frenetic naturally so I don’t think that I am the target audience. Why would you need something like that?
My Starbucks charges alone would tend to disagree with your observations. (Not to mention the many other sources of coffee that I use on a daily or near daily basis.)
And I picked up the habit from my parents, who used to drink a pot a day each…
That was until they got the first of many espresso machines, which only makes shots at a time.
I’ve never noticed black people not drinking coffee.
I was just thinking that myself, I have a Korean born American friend who is lactose intolerant and she says it’s a genetic thing that affects people of Oriental origin…
(I know the “O” word isn’t PC in America but i don’t know what other term to use)
Oh, I know. That stuff wasn’t very good at all, and I was ecstatic when my company switched to a slightly better coffee provider. The point is, she would make the coffee with double the standard amount, which turned it from bitter but palatable to something resembling chewy mud. Personally, I thought it was an improvement.
For me, at least, coffee (and caffeine pills) are the difference between being sleepy and being normal. It is impossible to get moving in the morning without it. Plus, if I don’t get my usual daily amount, I get a massive headache and feel like shit. The stuff also tastes good.
I used to drink about 8 cups a day, tatse great to me, but then so does my Mom. I’m thinking it’s exposure. I stopped drinking it regulary a couple of years ago, now I can take it or leave it, mostly leave it.
At the last office I worked, the black people drank just as much and probably more coffee than the white.
And I’ve just got to hijack, Community Coffee is wonderful. Though I drink much less coffee than my parents, I still know the best cofee is Community Between Roast.
-Lil
Delurking here because there’s actually an OP that relates to me!
I’m black (more of a coffe brown, actually ), and I drink at least 4-5 cups a day. Actually, almost all of the black people I know drink coffee, except one or two family members.
My mom drinks coffe like water, so I guess for me it could be an exposure thing.
I’m also one of those people with a negative reaction to caffeine though. It doesn’t wake me up. Actually, I’ve been known to have a cup before bed and go right to sleep. (my mom does this too…hereditary?)
However, if I don’t get my daily quota of java, I get a raging headache and feel like crap for most of the day.
There was a black guy in front of me at Starbucks last night, but come to think of it he was kind of a light skinned black guy, maybe like a dusky paper grocery bag or quadroon shade… but he was white enough… for coffee.
Caffeine is a natural diuretic. If you like the taste of coffee, try half-caf or decaf. I bet you can stomach that. I could be wrong, of course–maybe there’s something in the coffee itself that does it to you. But it’s worth trying half-caf or decaf if you haven’t, IMO.
As to the OP, I can’t say I’ve noticed a difference. I work at a coffee shop in a very white-dominated area (with a significant white-supremacy presence, even) east of the city proper, and black people seem about equally represented in our customer base as in the local population. I grew up in an upper-middle-class area that was over 90% black, BTW, and most of my classmates’ parents slammed coffee like there was no tomorrow. I think the real dividing line is based on geography (notice that several posters claiming that every black person they know drinks coffee, live in cold climates or freakin’ Seattle) or education/income, or there isn’t really a dividing line. Who’s to say? I, for one, am happy to leave the question to a sociologist.
Veering back off-topic, I like my women like I like my coffee:
), and I drink at least 4-5 cups a day. Actually, almost all of the black people I know drink coffee, except one or two family members.