Giving new meaning to the term “discriminating shopper,” products are now sometimes being presented with something other than an ingredients label: signs indicating their producers’ race, ethnicity, or even sexual inclination. My, what could possibly go wrong?
A better question is: What has already gone wrong?
Just consider, for example, the image below of products at a Giant supermarket in the Washington, D.C., area.
(Image credit: American Thinker.)
This new labeling by the supermarket chain’s owners — Giant Food of Maryland, LLC, a $5.6 billion a year subsidiary of European retailing colossus Ahold Delhaize — was triumphantly announced via media late last year.
“Giant Food is rolling out updated shelf labels that enable shoppers to identify products from minority-owned businesses,” reported trade publication Supermarket News December 22.
“Plans call for all Giant supermarkets to post the new shelf labels starting in January, the Landover, Md.-based regional grocer said yesterday,” the site continued. “The labels will inform customers about items from companies that are women-, Black-, Asian-Indian-, Hispanic-, LGBT-, Asian-Pacific- or veteran-owned.”
“More than 3,100 food and nonfood products will feature the updated shelf labels across Giant’s 164 stores in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia,” Supermarket News also informs. “The retailer said the items come from 281 minority-owned businesses in its network of vendor partners.”
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Now you know why some white Americans have endeavored to identify as “minority” (e.g., Senator Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal): It’s obviously because of all that white privilege.
This apparently now includes the privilege of being boycotted based on product-“identity” labeling, though boycotting could go more than one way. American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson makes this point, and then adds that such labeling has an interesting historical precedent (image below).
(Image credit: Yadvashem.org.)
Lifson also presents an e-mail from American Thinker writer Clarice Feldman. “There seems to be a well-organized plan to promote black owned businesses — something seen here at Giant, but I also saw on my online grocer Fresh Direct,” she writes. “It’s kinda like the Nazi campaign to dissuade shoppers from buying from Jewish owned businesses — in this case, white owned businesses discriminating against suppliers that are not minority owned.”
Feldman wrote to Giant and received a reply stating, in part:
Hello Clarice,
Thank you for taking the time to contact us.
At Giant Food, we value our stakeholders’ diversity — associates, customers, and vendors — as one of our greatest strengths. We are committed to fostering and maintaining an open and inclusive environment where all are welcome in our stores and organization.At Giant Food, we are committed to making it easier for customers to identify product attributes that are important to them by fostering a diverse and inclusive network of suppliers that reflects the unique backgrounds and experiences of our Giant family, our customers, and our communities.
… The new shelf labels initiative comes as part of Giant’s supplier diversity efforts in developing strong relationships with businesses that offer quality products, excellent customer service and competitive prices to shoppers. We continually work towards providing a better, safer, more inclusive, and convenient work and shopping experience for all our stakeholders.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact Giant Food.
Sincerely,
Adam S
Specialist, Customer Care
Translation: Some of our customers want to racially discriminate, so we’re going to facilitate this desire.
Giant obviously believes it’s responding to a market imperative, and the company is, of course, within its legal right to thus proceed. Note that since corporations care about money first and last, the rule here is simple: If a policy will increase profit, big business will generally embrace it regardless of its moral stature.
This is why corporations broke bread with the Nazi regime during the WWII era and why they advance sexual devolutionary agendas and pander to the fascist Chinese today.
Of course, one factor determining whether a policy will bring profit is whether it’s socially acceptable, and this is why I wrote earlier that Giant’s move reflects what has already gone wrong.
In a way, it’s a bit as with the marijuana-legalization debate. Wherever you stand on the matter, it should be recognized that pot is gaining legal acceptance because it previously gained social acceptance.
Likewise, Giant’s moral dwarf of a policy is being pursued because identity politics has pseudo-elite endorsement and, perhaps, sufficient rank-and-file acceptance in liberal areas/states (it remains to be seen how much popular support this policy will actually enjoy).
For having turned almost on a dime from superficially stressing racial “equality” to advocating racial discrimination under the guise of “equity,” the Left now is all about race all the time. We even hear about proper English, correct math answers, industriousness, and punctuality being “white norms” (if not reflective of “white supremacy”).
It’s a dangerous game, too. As immigrationists increasingly make the country more “diverse” via Third World-oriented immigration policy, leftists are not only discouraging assimilation — they’re actually stoking the fires of tribalism, a process that historically has cost millions of lives by way of inter-group warfare.
Wise nations recognize this as a danger and, first, encourage demographic stability (e.g., Hungary) by rejecting immigration polices leading to balkanization. Second, they’ll stress unity and reject the hyphenated-_____ phenomenon.
Mexico, for instance, ruled by a white upper class that constitutes only three percent of the population, insists that everyone is just “Mexican.” And though most wouldn’t guess it, Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini grasped balkanization’s perils and once said, “National unity has no need of the delirium of race.”
For this delirium can beget dissolution. Just consider the Roman Empire, Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. Upon becoming too weak to handle their “strengthening diversity,” they got strengthened right into the dustbin of history.
By the way, this historical record is supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.
