New York Times: Dry January is racist

For a moment, it almost seemed like there was an outbreak of sense at the New York Times, with a column entitled ‘Dry January Is Driving Me to Drink’ . 

The piece, by Tressie McMillan Cottom, an NYT columnist for the past three years, ‘known for her incisive essays on social problems’,  begins by insisting that she is ‘happy’ for people doing Dry January, but she won’t be joining them. Why? Because she likes a drink? Or because it’s performative? 

No,  because Dry January is in fact racist. She writes: 

Consumer-driven health campaigns that get this kind of traction do not happen in a vacuum. A broader modern temperance movement promoting “clean” living traffics in moral superiority and old racist ideas.

Without explaining, the piece moves on, arguing that ‘Cutesy individual solutions cannot solve big social problems, like alcoholism or cancer.’ 

Yup, you fool – why aren’t you curing cancer, like you said you would when you’d do Dry January!

The piece then returns again to racism.