Today, fast food is vilified as the primary culprit in the national obesity epidemic and dietary-related illnesses such as diabetes among black Americans. It’s an industry where chains regularly appropriate civil rights history, employ predominantly low-wage workers of color, invest in scholarships for underresourced students, and enlist R&B stars such as Mary J. Blige to controversially peddle new products. It’s not a simple or one-dimensional story. Vox spoke with Chatelain about the tangled history of McDonald’s. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Cynthia Greenlee
What promise did franchises offer that so many different groups and people saw them as an opportunity? Mainline civil rights organizations like the NAACP, the Black Panthers, white liberals, and even Richard Nixon all saw a role for fast-food franchises in building black communities.
Marcia Chatelain
It is hard to imagine, for many of us today, a time in which fast food was not king. The period of time I cover in the book is where black people across ideological, political, and economic spectrums are still navigating their role as consumers. The idea that a fast-food restaurant would be such an attractive possibility isn’t just about the possibility for economic development for the owner class or the class of people who could be franchise owners.
It’s also for people who had very hostile experience of restaurants or very limited experience of restaurants. They thought this is kind of cool that a major national brand is going to be available in their community. Because it’s presenting something that is contrary to the exclusion [that black people experienced before and after legal desegregation]. And for the conservatives who were really supportive of this idea, it’s classic conservative ideology in the sense that the markets will meet the needs of people.
Cynthia Greenlee
So let’s talk about what you call race or black capitalism, the idea that economic development and mass infusions of private (and, to some extent, public) funding could effect social change for black communities. But it didn’t trickle down and bring economic justice. Was it a separate and unequal approach?
Marcia Chatelain
It’s separate and unequal in the sense that it’s providing an opportunity for wealth to be created on an unequal basis. There was a recent Business Insider article about the struggles of black McDonald’s franchise owners who are really trying to keep their heads above water. Something I struggled with in the book is: How do I write about aggrieved millionaires? How do I write about African Americans who are able to financially leverage themselves in ways that previous generations couldn’t imagine, but they’re still on the outside of that structure of power? It’s instructive to help us understand that capitalism does not equalize these conditions under racism.
Cynthia Greenlee
You talk about black men who become the pioneering members of the National Black McDonald’s Operators Association (NBMOA). And even the name is telling. They are operators and not owners.
Marcia Chatelain
Franchising is fascinating to me because it’s the right to manage the liabilities of something someone else owns but makes you feel like you’re in charge of. And so it’s hard to talk about African Americans and franchising because you are buying black — in a way. But you’re really not buying black all the way. But are you ever really?