Pekut and Carwick

Like most kids growing up in rural parts of North America in the 1990s, I put my right hand where I thought my heart was and recited the pledge of allegiance every weekday morning. My fifth grade class spent a lot of time discussing the origin, if not the meaning of the words liberty and justice for all. Growing up in a part of the country where the census counts over 90% of the population as white, they rang true as far as I could see. For a long time though, Ive ignored the glaring contradiction of the for all part of that pledge and the radically different liberty and justice served to black and brown people in our country. Sure, I remember seeing Rodney King beaten by police officers on TV, and feeling helpless and outraged. I even remember talking with my father about why people were rioting afterward. But that all happened worlds away in Los Angeles. We didnt have that problem where I lived. Its easy to ignore systemic racism in America when you, and everyone around you, is white. The ability to appreciate flavor and aroma is universal across class, race, and gender (I LOVE THAT IDEA TOO). But universality and inclusivity are not the same. Craft spirits producers and big multinational beverage companies both like the idea of inclusivity, but the reality is that businesses default to boundaries of class, culture, and personal comfort zones just like people do. These boundaries overwhelmingly fall along racial divides and it takes work to shift them. A lazy default to systemic disenfranchisement isnt just an insult to our one nation, indivisible and locking talented, productive people out of the economy is not only ethically problematic, its stupid, self defeating, and quantifiably bad for the entire economy (How bad? read Hsieh, Chang-Tai, et al. The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth. Econometrica, vol. 87, no. 5, 2019, pp. 143974. ). You can pledge allegiance to a flag and the republic for which it stands, but the republic is the people, and systemic economic disenfranchisement hobbles ...