HURRAH IT CONTINUES
Oct. 21st, 2012 02:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett[Disclaimer: I am doing the whitey-discovers-racism thing. I'm not aware of an existing UK-biased "every single one of these is racist" list of sellers of rooibos, though. So uh. Is maybe helpful?]
I can't consume caffeine. There was a hilarious period of about six months where I'd find myself feeling nervy and on edge, so I'd have a nice soothing cup of black tea, and... end up in a panic attack under my desk. Took me a while to spot the pattern there.
Anyway, one way or another I ended up drinking rooibos. Quite a lot of rooibos. And I've just, finally, got around to looking up the various companies I have bought from.
Tick Tock Teas are kind of appallingly racist: they are boasting about being a family-run firm with a history going back 107 years... and the photo on the landing page of their website is a bunch of old white dudes in cricket whites. JUST SO YOU KNOW they also run Dragonfly Teas.
The Original Redbush Tea Co (founded 1997) is somewhat less bad. In 2001 they set up links with the Kalahari Peoples Fund (... though now I have looked up the link to that I'm giving that the side-eye too), though I'm giving their page on the topic the slight side-eye.
If you search the Twinings' website for "redbush", you (a) also get results for "honeybush" and (b) get the charming description "The beating hot sun in the Western Cape province of South Africa gives the redbush its juicy, refreshing flavour and copper-red colour."
Tetley looks surprisingly non-dubious, but that is probably because they don't actually really say anything.
Clipper Teas are another one largely let off the hook by dint of not really saying anything.
Yogi Teas is predictably awful and comes with a side-order of unscientific parotting of 40-year-old thoroughly-disproven bullshit about antioxidants and free radicals.
Major UK supermarkets are now doing own-brand versions; I'm not even sure how I'd go about tracing provenance and possible Dubiousness on that.
I can't consume caffeine. There was a hilarious period of about six months where I'd find myself feeling nervy and on edge, so I'd have a nice soothing cup of black tea, and... end up in a panic attack under my desk. Took me a while to spot the pattern there.
Anyway, one way or another I ended up drinking rooibos. Quite a lot of rooibos. And I've just, finally, got around to looking up the various companies I have bought from.
Tick Tock Teas are kind of appallingly racist: they are boasting about being a family-run firm with a history going back 107 years... and the photo on the landing page of their website is a bunch of old white dudes in cricket whites. JUST SO YOU KNOW they also run Dragonfly Teas.
The Original Redbush Tea Co (founded 1997) is somewhat less bad. In 2001 they set up links with the Kalahari Peoples Fund (... though now I have looked up the link to that I'm giving that the side-eye too), though I'm giving their page on the topic the slight side-eye.
If you search the Twinings' website for "redbush", you (a) also get results for "honeybush" and (b) get the charming description "The beating hot sun in the Western Cape province of South Africa gives the redbush its juicy, refreshing flavour and copper-red colour."
Tetley looks surprisingly non-dubious, but that is probably because they don't actually really say anything.
Clipper Teas are another one largely let off the hook by dint of not really saying anything.
Yogi Teas is predictably awful and comes with a side-order of unscientific parotting of 40-year-old thoroughly-disproven bullshit about antioxidants and free radicals.
Major UK supermarkets are now doing own-brand versions; I'm not even sure how I'd go about tracing provenance and possible Dubiousness on that.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-21 02:23 pm (UTC)Funny-not-in-the-haha-way story about my own process:
I always knew my grandfather had been born in Mexico. At some point in high school, I came to the sudden realization that this meant that he was Mexican - and by extension so was my mother and so was I. And every time my father made some disparaging comment about wetbacks, beaners and so forth, he was saying that about my grandfather (whom I adored) and my mother and me.
Needless to say, this led to a sudden, major paradigm shift (because if he was wrong about Mexicans - why - why - he might be wrong about black people, too!) and I walked around in a daze for quite some time until I finally slotted everything together in my head.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-22 09:03 am (UTC)I think I prefer the kind of advertising that has British people enjoying tea (although I would prefer it if they remembered that many British people are not white) than the kind that has Exotic People doing Exotic Things in it 'cos that's real skeevy.
I'm not sure where the cricket team comes into this; I guess they are imagining what a county cricket team looks like in the UK? (the English cricket team looked kinda white to me when I last watched any cricket which, er, might have been a while ago) Or is this their idea of what cricket teams look like where they grow the tea (because... no).