HE’S SUPER-CEREAL, YOU GUYS: Bioethicist: Government Whole Milk Push Is Racist.
The noted bioethicist Art Caplan — with whom I usually disagree, but not always — has really jumped the shark with a column in which he accuses the administration of pushing racism in its publicity promotion of whole milk as part of a healthy diet. From “Is the Recent Effort to Glorify Whole Milk Tainted by Racism?” published in Bioethics Today:
As a student of and writer on the history of science and public health under fascist regimes, I am suspicious. Milk drinking is political. Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking.
That’s the first I have ever heard of such argumentation. Caplan gives examples:
Fascists have used the beverage as a rallying cry for white supremacy since the days of Il Duce’s (Benito Mussolini’s) public health campaigns in Italy. The Nazis were enamored of whole milk as well. In America, drinking whole milk has for years been a part of alt-right, white nationalist messaging in tweets, memes, and videos.
Didn’t we do the “milk is racist/fascist” stuff repeatedly during Trump’s first term? Why, yes we did!
● WUT: College Student Explains Why Milk Is Racist.
—The Daily Wire, March 16th, 2017.
● PETA of course got in on the act on March 31st, 2017:
● Why White Supremacists Are Chugging Milk (and Why Geneticists Are Alarmed).
—The New York Times, October 17th, 2018.
Curiously, for the four years in-between Trump’s terms in office, milk wasn’t deemed racist by the left: Biden orders milkshakes in bizarre behind-the-scenes video of final days in White House.