I went to Starbucks the other day to see if they would ask me about race and ended up mortifying my 9-year-old kid.

I explained that Starbucks has this silly new program (one quickly cancelled by Starbucks a day after my excursion) where the baristas are supposed to strike up conversations about race with customers. I said that I planned to write a column about it because it was funny.

"That’s mean," she said. "People won’t pay you to be mean."

Well, actually, hate to break the news but ... they do. That’s my journalism career in a nutshell. People pay me to be mean (aka figure out what isn’t working and stuff).

Then she pointed out that Starbucks might want to change its logo from a white woman if they are concerned about race. I hadn’t noticed that. Good observation. And she pointed out that she has a bunch of friends of different races, which is, of course, great (I suppose now Starbucks will claim that their goofy race program provoked a conversation about race between me and my kid. But, see, I didn’t need Starbucks to do that. Nor is it any of their business).

The white guy at the drive-through window handed me my over-priced coffee and change and didn’t say a single word about race. He didn’t ask me about Ferguson or the racial backgrounds of my friends and neighbors (thank God). So I mortified my kid more by asking him why he wasn’t asking me about race.

He smiled nervously and said, in an embarrassed fashion, that they were "leaving it up to me" whether I wanted to talk to them about race (no thanks) as he exchanged awkward glances with the other two (white) employees in the store. But see that’s the whole crux of the problem with this: Why would anyone want to talk to their barista about race in the first place?

He didn’t wax on about the horrors of white privilege or cultural hegemony. If I want to learn about that, I can attend a lecture on campus.

I decided to spare him my opinions about Ferguson and drove off. I’m not sure my opinions are what they are looking for. This is one of those pandering, fairly sickening things that rich liberals do to look like they care about race before they (generally) return home to live in their mostly white gilded communities.

But they care, so that’s all that matters, right? We all care. We just don’t have to agree about how to solve the problems that face different races in American society (and I am not a person who believes racism doesn’t exist; it does, and America has a pretty awful history regarding it. It’s just that forcing smug Starbucks baristas to embarrass themselves by asking customers about race isn’t going to make Milwaukee a less segregated city).

Yeah, you got it. No one is really going to do this (other than a bunch of newspaper columnists and reporters). It’s just a PR stunt. Yeah, I am officially falling into the trap. You know, if Starbucks really wants to do some good, they will sell cheaper coffee so poor people can afford it and stop putting mom and pop coffee shops out of business and avoid gentrifying neighborhoods (by the way, are there a lot of Starbucks in the inner city?). There are so many problems with race in this community, by the way, that are serious: disparities in poverty and crime and so on. This does nothing to tackle them. Maybe Starbucks should fund more scholarships for minority youth; that could make a difference.

In case you haven’t heard about it, Starbucks announced this program the other day in conjunction with USA Today. The baristas are supposed to provoke conversations with customers about race and write things like Race Together on their cups. Among other things, they are supposed to ask whether we’ve evolved from our parents’ perceptions of race (how old do they think I am? My parents were hippies who came of age in the ‘60s). They’re supposed to ask how many friends and neighbors we have from different races and other stuff like that.

"In the past year, I have been to the home of someone of a different race ___ times," is one question they’re supposed to use.

First they tried to hug us in McDonalds and now this. What is next? Is Culver’s going to lecture us about abortion? Will we have to debate Scott Walker at Wendy’s? What other verboten topics are we supposed to talk to strangers about in the couple minutes it takes them to hand over our coffee? Honestly, I felt sorry for the barista. Can you imagine being some 18-year-old kid who’s supposed to strike up conversations with customers about race? He’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t punch him in the nose.

I have a lot of friends of other races, actually. They are Latino, African-American, Asian and Native American. Sure, we can all learn from each other. But frankly the best way to negate racism is to actually get to know people of different races in a normal everyday environment (school, work), not to talk about it with a stranger handing you coffee.

Here’s the other problem with this horrible idea.

It’s impossible to have honest conversations about race in America. Especially at Starbucks, which is run by a CEO (a white guy) who has aggressively embraced liberal causes, such as anti-gun crusades. I hope he doesn’t make the baristas talk about guns to us next.

There are only a few acceptable answers and topics these days to such questions. Free speech has been shut down through fear. Fear of being called a racist if you disagree with the prevailing perspectives. There’s zero chance that you can talk about black-on-black crime in Starbucks. Or express the point of view that it was right that Officer Wilson wasn’t charged in Ferguson. Heck, these days even voicing support for the police at all equates to racism in some people’s minds. Times are tense.

So give me my coffee and butt out.