It is a ludicrous paradox that the aftertaste of coffee and the hard work of coffee farmers can be described accurately with the same one word: bittersweetness.

On 22 February, TLMUN collaborated with Taylor’s Barista Club to host the third Coffee Talk session. This marks the first coffee talk session whereby coffee is provided, in conjunction with the name of the event. At the courtesy of the barista club, I indulged in three small paper cups of caffeine, each differing from the other in terms of its beans, taste and quality. As someone who rarely drinks coffee, my uncouth tastebuds failed to detect any discrepancies between the three. 

And so I adopted a natural, foolish inclination of a careless consumer. If I couldn't tell the difference between good coffee and bad coffee, then to me all coffee was the same and the determining factor that would precede my purchase of coffee would be its price. It is very humbling and honest to say that I was proven to be wrong. For farmers who produce coffee beans for commodity coffee, essentially coffee you can find at your local supermarket such as Nestle instant coffee, farmers only receive 50 cents for 1kg of coffee which equates to 40 cups of coffee. 

Adrianna compared commodity coffee to fast fashion brands such as Shein, noting that the similarities of both industries lie in the poor quality of products and the vast exploitation of workers, yet the majority of us still purchase from these companies. A clear distinct line is derived between the problems that coffee farmers face and the firms who want to maximise their profit, both goals opposing the other, and the middle ground, us consumers who want to purchase cheap yet good quality coffee. 

Thus, the coffee talk spiralled into a heated discussion on whether or not fair trade coffee was fair, and the sustainability of direct trade coffee. Describing the theoretical concept, ‘fair trade’ prices provided they meet specific labour, environmental and production standards. However, in practicality, the quality of the coffee beans is poor and farmers are still underpaid. In comparison, ‘direct trade’ meant that roasters directly purchased from the farmers. Someone questioned why consumers should spend more money on coffee since they can't discern the difference between fair trade and direct trade coffee. In actuality, the selling price of Starbucks coffee and direct trade coffee are around the same. If you can't detect a difference in the taste at least one does less harm to your body than the other.  

At the end of the day, it’s all about empathy. If you can afford to buy a cup of Starbucks coffee, you can purchase quality coffee from smaller coffee sellers. Remember, buy coffee that tastes good and would benefit the farmers. Or don’t (I am a hypocrite for telling you what to do and it defeats the whole purpose of thinking for ourselves).

Allow me to expose an underlying Malaysian trait that we’re all convicted of: At some point in our lives, we have boasted at least once about the multitude of languages that roll fluently off our tongues. However, let’s strip away that facade for a moment and be completely honest with ourselves, how many of us non-Malays can speak Bahasa Malaysia fluently?

On 8 March, TLMUN hosted their last Coffee Talk session of the semester. The session commenced with a simple question, “How many of us could speak fluent Malay?”. To put it mildly, the hands raised were sparse, and thus began our explorations into the first part of the coffee talk: Language. 

It’s fascinating how an aggregate of syllables and lilt tones conform to what we know as ‘language’ but behind this term carries a weight of words that can’t be spoken implicitly, norms and cultures, and history that builds the bases of our country. “If you go into an LV store in KL speaking Malay, you’ll probably be treated differently,” said Adrianna. In the city, the social stigma that people who speak Malay are deemed to be ‘uneducated’, while English speakers are associated with being  ‘high-class’. At best you receive a few dirty looks, at worst? Education inequality, job discrimination, race-based violence, are all exerted not just because of disparities in language but systemic racism, colorism and also xenophobia. 

Rasuli (a past member of IR) talked about ‘Ola Bola’ and ‘Mat Kilau’, how one portrayed Malaysian unity so accurately and the latter so terribly. It was falsely claimed in ‘Mat Kilau’ that only Sikhs helped the British colonise Malaysia; some Malays were also complicit in this. We mustn’t allow erroneous revisionism and inaccurate media portrayals of Malaysian culture to further indoctrinate the youth of our nation. Awareness, activism, advocacy and basic human empathy can bring us a long way. 

A few international students from Bangladesh present at the coffee talk too admitted that these social issues are prevalent back in their home country, and that goes to say that culture everywhere is structured similarly, just written in a different language. Our identities intertwine with the language we speak, our race, our background, our ethnicity, and with this identity comes the addition or lack of certain privileges or even an increment of discrimination, and the weight that regulates the problems in our society falls on our shoulders. 

Knowledge is a default privilege enacted on each and every one of us and to learn is to fully abuse this privilege. That’s why we love the Coffee Talk Sessions. We allow our most visceral thoughts to surface as a form and process of critical thinking, further refining or perhaps even altering these thoughts through intellectual interactions with one another.  “Taylorians want to discuss issues,” said Dylan. A challenge of opinions may not necessarily negate or discourage one’s point of view but instead pushes us to the periphery of metacognition, to think about our thought processes and question their rationale.