Spurred by Globe columnist Devra First's thoughts, Boston is a-bubble with discussion about whether it is ethically okay to buy Peet's coffee, given the company's Nazi history. The column specifically references, as the columnist's favorite, Major Dickason's Blend, which to my ears has always sounded ineffably colonial to begin with. If I were in a culturally appropriative mood I might call this karma.

I drink Peet's every workday (because their outpost at Mass Art has the best muffins in the neighborhood) and plan to continue so, but I respect the question. It's a variant of those we've been asking a lot about children's books and history, identity, and oppression: who has author A harmed in the past? Does book B harm children in the present? Etc. I do like this comment First solicited from philosophy professor Nir Eisikovits: "You stop drinking the coffee, you stop listening to Wagner, you stop reading Dostoevsky, Kant, and everything he contributed to the canon because he was a crazy racist. On the force of the moral argument, you can move from coffee to Dostoevsky pretty quickly.” And people do!