Black Gold

http://movies.tvguide.com/black-gold/review/283667 - Black Gold review by Ken Fox

Today, coffee is far more than just a drink. It is a culture – part of daily life of most people. Even in the place where I come from, South Korea, you can easily find streets lined with dozens of coffee shops just in a block. Coffee shops have become a place for meeting, spending leisure time, or even a business. Yet, the movie ‘Black Gold’ and its review, by Ken Fox, reveal shocking behind story of coffee industry and awaken our sense of awareness of disparities.

Ken remarks not just about unawareness of the consumers but also unawareness (or perhaps indifference) between the corporation and the coffee farmers. I certainly agree with his points. It is what numbness, unawareness, or perhaps even indifference is what maintains the unequal system in the coffee industry.

Coffee farmers are often incognizant of the wages they get from eight hours of work. It was not until Tadesse Meskela, the manager of Ethiopia’s Oromo Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, told them that they are only being paid 0.23 cents for one kilo of beans, which could brew 80 cups of 2.3 dollars coffee. They have no idea that the coffee price is being controlled by two large cities – New York and London.

It is not just the farmers. Ken points that the film is ‘tacitly unkind to the unthinking’, as he refers to the manager of original Starbuck chain in Seattle, who is proud and confident about Starbuck’s responsibility for the people and its roll in connecting people. However, she would not have glimpse of the life of Ethiopian coffee farmers and how her corporation is ‘exploiting’ and ‘disconnecting’ the farmers life, as Ken puts it. And of course, the consumers, people like us, are mostly indifferent about this matter too.

Here, we can see another aspect of the empire that we are in – The coffee industry. Because the process of how coffee is made and transported to the shops and brewed into a cup of Café Latte is too vast and complicated, we often don’t bother to understand the whole process and just enjoy a nice cup of coffee in a fancy coffee shop. We believe that five-dollars for a cup of coffee are reasonable price without any questions. We easily believe what we are offered, without recognizing the mega corporations controlling the coffee price and deceiving the farmers to get more profits out of them. All we know is that coffee is transported from some countries in Africa to the factories and then to the shop. But about how it is done and who takes to money, we still do not know.

Indifference cannot be an excuse. A teacher does not let a student go for not doing his homework because he did not know. Purchasing a free-trade coffee is not just enough. As a people who envision shalom, Christian should bother to know about such issue and develop a sense of awareness about injustice in this world. We should care to speak for the coffee farmers, and also pray for the workers in Starbucks.