With the recent elections in the U.K. and France, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and all the top summer sport like Euro 2024 and Wimbledon going on, a few less well-known yet still vitally important occasions in the global calendar have gone a little under the radar of late. Last week, for instance, on Tuesday July 9th, did you realise it was National Cow Appreciation Day (NCAD)?
NCAD began in 2005, when one of America’s largest fast-food chains, Chick-Fil-A, decided to promote “delightful cow interactions” between men and cattle by handing out free meals to mentally ill people who turned up to branches dressed in cow costumes. Other officially encouraged activities include being urged to “Host a cow appreciation party” amongst your friends, or “Organise a cow appreciation parade” to go alongside all the gay appreciation ones we have these days. According to PR material, the festival is intended primarily “to honour cows and encourage people to eat more chicken instead” – a vital aim indeed for Chick-Fil-A.
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Astronomers are also under attack for viewing the Milky Way.
Well the Milkybar Kid was a symbol of white supremacy and colonialism, basically a poster child for the KKK, let’s be honest. I really had no idea how racist we all were back in the day, but as a kid stuffing my face with Milkybars the thought never crossed my mind that I was complicit while I enjoyed my white privilege, to be honest.
However, I do like to think I offset all of that by enjoying Coco Pops for breakfast because I had to always wait until they turned the milk brown, so nobody can accuse me of racism.
Actually, scratch that. I hated brown bread and only ate the white variety, cut into triangles, no less. Shit.
Did you collect those little racist effigies in Robertsons jams and marmalades and win your KKK lapel badge?
That brought excitement to my breakfasts and teas, especially when a new jar was to ne opened.
However my wife did her bit for promoting racial harmony – in the late 50s she had a black doll and a white doll and always took them out in their pram together.
I do recall being a member of the Kia-Ora Club and they sent me a pencil case and birthday cards every year. So as far as racism goes ( if I remember the ads from the ’80s correctly ) I’ve got form. It’s ‘white guilt’ from here on in.
Do you think bread named White Privilege would sell well?
Mother’s White Pride has quite the traditional, far right ring to it. You get to be sexist and racist all at the same time, killing two birds with one offensive stone. Quite the achievement.
Just like Mother used to make.
Saving the planet and inclusion
I have a tiny mind. This made my morning! I hope you don’t mind me ‘borrowing’ it
And apparently white rice is better for you than brown rice. And there was me thinking the reverse all that time. Must be the inner KKK in me!
I loved white chocolate and was not keen on Dark Chocolate. I must be a racist pig. ——On closer inspection no I am not though. Some of my favourite people in the world were black —–Muhammad Ali, Oscar Peterson, George Duke, Thiery Henry, Nat King Cole, Pele, Luther Vandross, The Jackson Five, Quincy Jones, Marcus Miller, Chaka Khan, ………… de da de da.
It is astounding how all the lactose-intolerant races survived babyhood. Human breast milk contains lactose.
Ok Downvoter. What is wrong with that statement?
The theory of people who badly want to sell lactase pills (which a guaranteed to have no medical effect whatsoever because otherwise, they’d be regulated as medicines which they, as far as I know, are not) is that almost adults magically stop being able to digest lactose some time between 20 and 40 and they point at side effect of lactose digestion, such as farts, to prove their point: It works! Therefore, it’s broken and you must buy my pills!
Was this article lifted from the Babylon Bee?
Some random thoughts…
How long before the surnames Black and White are banned?
It appears to me that white chocolate is now referred to as ‘blonde’ chocolate. (I thought I’d come across something new in the confectionary line until I examined it a little closer.)
One of my favourite books as a child was Little Black Sambo.
Even in the 50s I had a black doll. Wish I still had it, that particular one is a collectors item now.
I’m jolly glad I’m at the arse end of my life sometimes.
I do remember a recent story of a black high school athlete ( basketball I think ) in the U.S who either ‘died suddenly’ or had one of those ‘extremely rare’ cardiac events. His surname was White, and I thought to myself that’d be a really unfortunate name if you were racist. Same goes for vice versa, of course, as Black is a very common surname but normal people’s minds don’t automatically gravitate towards ethnicity given that it’s just a colour first and foremost.
I do think if there were to be a mascot of racial equality and tolerance then an obvious choice would be the zebra. Do you think many people are offended by zebra crossings? Not sure…I now remember I used to like those ‘Black Jack’ sweets ( when you’d go to the corner shop and ask for a quarter of something or a ’10p mix-up’ ) as a kid. God, the evidence of guilt just keeps stacking up…Self-flagellation to commence right about now..
Zebras are transracist.
If the Zebra Crossings are painted in the colour of the Rainbow Flag, those homophobic Horses don’t like to cross them.
A Black Sambo, in my childhood… 1950s… was liquorice-flavoured chewing gum with an image of a black boy – tight, curly hair of course – on the wrapper blowing a large bubble. After chewing these as a child, it made me a racist for life.
I believe they were 1d a piece – heavy competition from ha’penny chews of which two could be bought for the price of one Black Sambo.
So racism or economy. Tough choices as kids in those days.
Clearly you were being financially motivated into a racist mindset, a proselytized child. A Racist for life.
I fear I too may have been unwittingly conditioned as a child. Completely oblivious of that fact until reading this excellent feature which has triggered cold sweats and images of boxes of ‘blackjacks’. (Can I say that?)
I wonder why the most common breed of cow in the UK is both black and white? Does this make them racially diverse, or does it make them both racist and guilty of cultural appropriation?
And on a related note, ever wonder why the door to No.10, Downing St has always been black?
Oh yes, and the world’s oceans are all obviously politically right-of-centre.
There’s indeed no milk in mainland China. But in Hong Kong, it’s everywhere despite the exact same supposedly genetically lactose intolerant kind of people are living there. By strange coincidence, there’s also no bread in mainland China but in Hong Kong, there is, getting us to the second prominent dietary fad, gluten. The real explanation of both is probably
Was der Chines’ nit kennt, das frißt er nit!
a German proverb originall about farmers: Farmers won’t eat what they don’t know. And the same is true for people from China who apparently seem to believe that all the world must turn into China because they have chosen to go there. See also mask mandate.
As with Milk & Bread, there is also the intolerance to alcohol in Asia compared to their European counterparts. In the old days when drinking water was not to be trusted we drank slightly fermented Beer, or Mead.
This intolerance is literally that: People being intolerant of stuff that’s culturally alien to them. I’ve been living in Hong Kong for three months in the past and milk was being sold and aggressively marketed as particularly valuable and healthy food everywhere there. Obviously introduced during British rule.
I also remember the same from the 1980s in Germany, long before allergies etc became fashionable hobbies of the bored-to-death-with-themselves class. A few slogans I still know out of my head:
Für die Extraportion Milch! (Kinderschokolade, Children’s Chocolate, Grant them an additional ration of milk!)
Mit der gesunden Alpenmilch! (Milka, With especially healthy milk from the Alps!)
Milch macht müde Männer morgens munter! (Some farmer’s association, Milk makes men who a tired in the morning more awake!)
I also remember a shot drinking contest with some guy from Shen Zhen in a local bar in 2005. That didn’t go too well for him (got dragged through the door by his pals while excitedly shouting nationalist gibberish) but I put that down to lack of practice and not genetical difficulties.
When everything is racist, nothing is.
Dairy is a Northern European thing due to climate conditions ensuring the lush grassland needed by cows, and cooler temperatures mean dairy products spoil less quickly than in hot climates.
This is why below the Olive Belt in Europe the emphasis is on oils and goat/sheep cheese.
So… milk isn’t much of thing in hot Countries and different topography.
The lactose gene: it switches off when babies are weened. If milk consumption continues beyond weening it does not switch off. In the USA Black people enjoy dairy products for this reason.
In most of Africa dairy is not a standard part of the diet so the gene switches off, but East Africa where dairy is, it remains switched on.
The genetic mutation explanation… this would only be a factor in populations already with dairy in their diet – but why would they have it if they could not consume it prior to the mutation? Additionally the mutation would have had to arrive simultaneously across a wide section of the population to have a noticeable effect.
Maybe the confusion comes from some babies born without the gene and unable to digest milk (even mother’s) successfully.
It doesn’t really switch off: There’s no need to produce enzyms handling lactose when there isn’t any and hence, the body obviously doesn’t do so. As far as I have been told by people more knowledgable about this than me, this is reversible: When milk is again being consumed, the body digests it again after a fairly short, transitional period.
Anecdote from saner times: When the German army was mobilized in 1914, the complete railway system was overnight switched to the so-called military timetable and all non-local transport of private people or goods on behalf of private people ceased so that the masses of soldiers, horses and military equipment could be moved as directed by the mobilization plan people had worked on for decades. The one exception to this rule was that the military timetable contain slots for so-called milk trains whose sole purpose was to ensure that milk supply to large cities wasn’t interrupted, ie, milk was the only good considered so critically important that the mobilization plan had to account for it.
I don’t know how the snowflakes would cope with the Maasai who drink cows blood on ceremonial occasions and also, apparently, as a cure for hangovers.
I don’t complain however, as I do like a nice bit of black pudding with my bacon.
speaking of milk for anyone who is interested i discovered about 15 years ago or more that raw milk is really delicious[ and doesnt’ bother my stomach ] . hook & sons ship raw
milk . for a short while you could buy it from a vending machine at selfridges ,
it would be poured into bottles . i never managed to get there but was so looking forward to it. hope they bring it back
In the 1990s, I was in some mental health clinic for reasons which don’t need to be mentioned here and one of the other guys who was also there was said to have stomach ulcer. Because of this, he couldn’t eat anything and lived exclusively on milk to avoid upsetting his stomach.
For people on N Cheshire, our local farmer sells it from a vending machine.
lucky you! i buy from wonderful local farmer that delivers once a week to nearby location here in the u .s. plus they sell raw milk in some stores , especially in California
I fear for the legacy of Harvey Milk. Will his memory be destroyed by his erstwhile allies in the Milk Wars like Robespierre?
I learned (and indeed taught, for a while) that the ‘global majority’ cannot digest milk as adults, as shown in the table and graphic. However, when I lived in China, I found that young Chinese people love it – milk tea is a huge business there (and increasingly in the UK too). So the story is obviously more complicated than portrayed – is there an epigenetic effect going on? Or are the milk tea companies using reduced-lactose milk?
raw milk still has the lactase enzyme. so no need for lactose free milk. i discovered all this after many years of drinking lactaid. raw milk revolution is one of the books i read
I stopped reading and just stared at the photo at the top of the artice. Sigh…