How did fast food become Black – and at what cost? Naa Oyo A. Kwate’s fascinating first book, Burgers in Blackface, introduced readers to the racist restaurants that dot the American landscape. Richard’s Restaurant and Slave Market, Mammy’s Cupboard, Coon Chicken Inn, and Sambo’s profited by providing safe spaces for white people to wax nostalgic about their ancestors’ history as enslavers. Some of these businesses continue to thrive after changes to their names and business models–or no changes at all. In her powerful second book, White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation, Kwate takes a deep dive into the intersection of racism and consumption, incorporating analyses of civil rights, corporate culture, health, marketing, law, and politics.
Kwate’s starting point is fast food’s origin story. As the most American of foods, fast food began as an institution created by and for white people. Modern associations between fast food and Blackness, symbolized by rappers and food swamps, where unhealthy food is plentiful but nutritious food is scarce, have overshadowed the industry’s racial history. The first fast food restaurants featured all-white serving staff catering to an exclusively white consumer base at “white utopias.” When fast food restaurants followed their white patrons to suburbs and sundown towns, which imposed curfews on Black people, their whiteness solidified. Yet, eventually, societal and market pressure to expand into Black neighborhoods forced an about-face on the industry. Now, most people think of fast food as the epitome of poor choice, not the apex of clean, wholesome food.
Kwate applies a critical race theory (“CRT”) lens to the evolution of fast-food marketing and the harms it inflicts on the consumers it targets. White Burgers’ CRT analysis underscores the importance of the call in Poole, Grier, Thomas, Sobande, et al’s seminal work, Operationalizing Critical Race Theory in the Marketplace,1 by providing a stunning exposé of racism’s role in fast food corporations’ profit-seeking strategies. Fast food’s reluctant entrée into Black media progressed from complete exclusion to using Black models in ads in mainstream white media to precision marketing across a multitude of platforms.
Civil rights activists’ focus on fast food as a site of equality, documented at length in Marcia Chatelain’s Franchise, set the stage for policies that promised progress through the expansion of Black capitalism. Throughout White Burgers, Kwate highlights how law and policy catapulted fast food from occupying a peripheral place in Black lives to becoming central to discourse about Black health today. Concerns about the U.S.’ international reputation, residential redlining, crime, labor issues, civil unrest, police brutality, and federal funding for fast food franchises in the name of Black empowerment all played key roles in fast food’s eventual, inevitable full embrace of Blackness.
Simultaneously, fast food has remained unbearably white. Trump was the quintessential Fast-Food President, publicly consuming burgers and fries and flaunting his obsession by serving McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, and Domino’s to national football champions, the Clemson Tigers, at the White House.2 This stunt embodied the duality of fast-food racism. Trump’s gesture insulted the team while championing his relatability to the everyday Joe, the common white man. But Trump was not exceptional in perpetuating an association between fast food and Black taste. Kwate points out that even the Obamas, who implemented health-forward policies, blamed Black people for their food choices, embracing an individualistic, “healthist” understanding of nutrition instead of a structural one. Then, after scolding Black Americans for feeding their children Popeye’s for breakfast, President Obama failed to act any differently at his inaugural luncheon. While treating the adult guests to a sumptuous smorgasbord of seafood stew, pheasant, and duck, Obama offered the children in attendance a banquet of hot dogs, cheeseburgers, French fries, and cheese pizza. (P. 341.)
A stunning collection of images documenting the industry’s evolving architecture, advertising, geography, and decor supports Kwate’s comprehensive narratives of fast food’s history in Detroit, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cincinnati. Through explorations of popular culture and political conflicts, White Burgers provides social and historical context for the current racialized health crisis. Kwate highlights Black resistance to fast food’s regulatory capture while acknowledging how racism distracts from the harms inflicted by the industry. “As the symbolic meanings of fast food shifted over its long history from all-American meal to fattening pollutant, Black people who consumed its meals became the fact of moral turpitude.” (P. 305.) White Burgers, Black Cash is a stunning contribution to the growing literature on race and food that should be required reading for all consumers.
- Sonja Martin Poole et al., Operationalizing Critical Race Theory in the Marketplace, 40 J. of Pub. Pol’y and Mktg. 126 (2021).
- Rebecca Jennings, The Controversy Around Trump’s Fast-Food Football Feast, Explained, Vox (Jan. 30, 2019).
