Mar 15, 2021
Today, we're exploring the intricate relationship amongAfrican-American politicians, civil rights organizations,communities and the fast food industry. We're talking with Dr.Marcia Chatelain, Professor of History and African-American Studiesat Georgetown University. She is the author of a fascinating newbook entitled, "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America."
Interview Summary
Well, let's begin with this question. Can you tell usabout your book Franchise, and why did you believe the story neededto be told?
Well, when I was in graduate school working on my dissertation,which would become my first book, I became more and more interestedin issues around the food system and food justice. The film "SuperSize Me" had come out while I was in graduate school. And I becamemore curious about some of the issues around health and nutrition,particularly the disparities along racial lines in terms of accessto fast food, as well as marketing and fast food. And as ahistorian, one of the things I noticed in a lot of theconversations, is that public health practitioners and advocatesfor healthy eating, rarely contextualized the problems in our foodsystem historically. There was a common sense understanding thatsome groups of people didn't have access, and some groups of peoplewere more susceptible to diet related diseases, but I didn't hearenough people asking, well, how did we get here? And so withfranchise, what I really wanted to think about were the ways thatMcDonald's, as the leading fast food brand, really pivoted frombeing a presence in mostly white suburban communities for the firsttwo and a half decades of its existence, to one that became such apresence in African-American communities. And so I wanted tohistoricize the problems we see today in terms of access tofood.
Before you tell us what you found in your historicalresearch, can you tell us how you developed resources for thebook?
Oh, thank you for asking that question. As a historian, I loveto talk about sources. You know, when I started "Franchise," thefirst thing I did was I called McDonald's, and they have anarchivist and their own research entity, like a library, and Icontacted them and I said, you know, "I'm a researcher and I'minterested in this history. Can I have access to your archives?"And they said, "No," which I expected. And so what I started to dois to think really creatively about the various places in whichMcDonald's first tried to enter African-American communities, andto think about the leadership of various black organizations duringthe time. So I started to look outside of the traditional sourcesfor business history and for fast food history. And by centeringAfrican-American communities, I found a treasure trove of resourcesabout McDonald's marketing strategies from the 1960s and how theystarted to engage with black consumers.
I have a question about marketing in particular I'd liketo ask you, but I'll loop back to that, but let's tell ourlisteners what you found mainly in your research.
So, essentially what happens is that McDonald's is founded bythe McDonald's brother in 1940. And they develop as a SouthernCalifornia brand, alongside other fast food businesses. But itwasn't until Ray Kroc creates the McDonald's system that we knowtoday. Franchises become the way that McDonald's grows in the 1950sand we start to see McDonald's confronting the reality of America'sracial climate, such as confrontations over segregation in theSouth at McDonald's restaurants.
And then, this period in 1968 shortly after Martin Luther KingJr's assassination, is when McDonald's is starting to pivot toAfrican-American neighborhoods because some white franchise ownersno longer want to do business in increasingly black communities.This is when the Nixon administration is encouraging something thatthey are calling black capitalism and is trying to promote blackbusiness ownership in black communities. And leaders of the civilrights organizations are trying to determine what their identitiesand interventions will be after King. And a number of people whowere very much formed by that mid-century civil rights strugglestart to think about black economic empowerment and development asthe next phase. And so all of these forces kind of come together tocreate an environment in which the fast food industry cancapitalize on federal funds and support from the civil rightsestablishment as well. And the black consumer market is hungeringfor inclusion in some of the mainstream marketplaces thatMcDonald's represents.
Over the years, people, especially the Rudd Center, hasdone research on targeted marketing of things like fast food andsugar beverages and cereals to people in different demographicgroups. And they found a considerable amount of targeted marketing.And there's been kind of a mix of outrage and lack of surprise onthis. Some of the lack of surprise comes from people who betterunderstand the history, like you're talking about. They will saythings like, “you know, there was a time when communities of colorwere ignored entirely by establishment companies, in both theproducts they were selling, in their portfolio and also in theirmarketing, and it actually came as a welcome change when thecommunity started being paid attention to.” But in the context ofyour work, does that all fit?
Absolutely. So what happened prior to the late 1960s isreminiscent of some of the conversations that were had after theGeorge Floyd summer in 2020, in terms of how far do corporatecommitments to inclusion go. How do we think about business as alever for social change? And so while there had been companies thatwere marketing to African-Americans throughout the early 20thcentury, especially during the Great Migration, with theurbanization of African-American communities and a recognition ofbuying power in those communities, it wasn't until the late 1960swhere you start to see that kind of market segmentation with thespecialized advertising, featuring African-American models orcelebrities. This is a period in time in which you were seeing thegrowth of African-American public television programming, showslike Soul! and Black Journal, that are really trying to speak tothe concerns of African-Americans. And so after '68, you start tosee this incredible creative industry that is built aroundmarketing to black consumers. And for the first time, it isn't justcommercials that were once designed for white people, and thenthere are a few black people in the commercials, these arecommercials that are trying to really touch upon black culturalmarkers.
So it sounds like this movement of fast food, led byMcDonald's, into the communities of color was welcome, because whatit represented, both in terms of economic development, and thenattention being paid to the communities.
Absolutely, and I think it's really a double-edged sword,because on one hand, people are desirous of this type of inclusion.And it is being sold to communities as this great economicopportunity for people to build wealth, to create jobs, to createcommunity. But the hindsight of 50 years has shown us that all ofthese things come at an incredibly high price. And in the book, Ireally like to focus on the varying reactions to what kind ofpresence McDonald's should be in black communities. You know, inplaces in Chicago, people embraced this idea, and community groupsactually tried to acquire franchises so they could reinvest in thecommunity. But in other places, people were skeptical of the kindof corporate-social responsibility talk about diversity thatMcDonald's was developing the language for throughout the 1970s.And I think the backdrop for all of these conversations and all ofthese struggles is: can business ever really fully deliver on thepromises of racial justice? And I think that the answer is no,because it always comes at such heavy costs to the most vulnerablecommunities.
I'm expecting that the number of owners of franchises ofcolor has increased over the years. Has that had an impact on thecompany and the way it does its business?
Well, this is a really fascinating point you raised in thismoment. So over the summer, McDonald's was sued by more than 50former African-American franchise owners. And there's a currentlawsuit of a current franchise owner, Herb Washington. And theyclaim that McDonald's has had a series of policies and behaviorsthat are racially discriminatory, and that has led to fewer blackfranchise owners. And so at its peak, it was a little over 300. Nowit may be in the 150s, but part of this process of gettingAfrican-Americans to franchise McDonald's was successful, in thesense that, throughout the 70s and 80s, you see the building ofeconomic power among this group of franchise owners. And they takea lot of their profits, and they become incredibly generous withhistorically black colleges and universities. They promptedMcDonald's to start celebrating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.They are the driving force behind some of McDonald's diversityinitiatives within its corporate headquarters, which it was laudedfor throughout the 80s and 90s. But these types of changes aresustainable to a point. They are corporate activities that,ultimately, shut out the people who, again, are most needingstructural change, and that's the black and brown workers who areworking at the fry stations, who are making burgers, who areensuring that people get fed in the stores. They're very much cutout of this vision as a force for good for racial justice.
Now, I'm going to ask you a question that's moreeconomic in nature. Here's the context. With programs like SNAP,where vast amounts of money are flowing out from Washington intocommunities, so people have food assistance that they really needdesperately, there's concern that too little of that money remainsin communities, that it just flows through, as people might leavethe neighborhoods to go to places like Walmart or Kroger to buytheir foods. And so there's a real missed opportunity for economicdevelopment going on. What do you think about McDonald's? Do youhave any sense of how much of that money remains in thecommunities? Tell me what you think about that.
Well, this is an interesting place in which you see theoperation of race in the context of a multinational corporation. Soone of the reasons why this lawsuit emerged last year and therewere different versions of similar lawsuits and similar claims,since the early 1970s, that McDonald's essentially restrictsAfrican-American business people to doing work in hyper-segregatedneighborhoods. And this is important, because part of the sell ofthis idea in '68 was that black franchise owners would be likelocal business people, right? They know the community, they'reconnected, they're invested, they'll employ people that they knowin the community and it'll have great rewards. But part of thatstrategy means that there has to be a level of exclusion of thosebusiness people from expanding into white neighborhoods orneighborhoods with different racial backgrounds. And part of theargument that black franchise owners make is, the name of the gameis volume. And so for us to really keep up with our white peers, weshould be able to get a whole bunch of stores in different types ofneighborhoods, with different types of operating costs, and wecould really profit from it, but McDonald's, they alleged, keepsthem from doing that.
And so when you talk about local impact and local dollars, oneof the problems of fast food is that a good portion of the revenuegoes way out past the community, because after you talk about thelow wage jobs that it provides, and maybe some of the philanthropicefforts, on the local level, a good portion of profits are going tofranchising fees, back to the national headquarters. A good portionof the advertising fund that franchisees have to pay into are goingto advertising firms in Chicago and New York City and Los Angeles,that aren't necessarily in the local communities. And the supplychain that fast food relies upon are from vendors and suppliersthat are all over the nation, and unlikely to be locally sourced.And so this was one of the critiques in the 1970s, and I think thecritique holds today, that fast food does not really circulatemoney in the local economy, because it is not a local smallbusiness, even though there's some aspects of franchising thatmight mirror that.
That is fascinating. And so when one calculates theultimate impact of a place like McDonald's on the community,there's the nutrition impact, to be sure. There's the losspotential for economic development within the community, butthey're all the sorts of historical reasons that made thispossible, and even desirable in the first place. But in your ownmind, given that you've thought about this so thoroughly, how doyou balance all of this?
Well, I think that this is a cautionary tale about bad ideas,well-intentioned bad ideas, and the sense that we could rely on theprivate marketplace to mediate the problems of the public goodcaused by racism and inequality is not sound thinking, it's notsound policy. What it is, is a reflection that communities that arevulnerable are often given constrained choices for survival and forsomething that mirrors advancement. And so it's kind of strange tothink that, in 1968, after all of the grief over the loss of Dr.King, and all of the unfinished business of the war on poverty, ofthe Johnson administration escalating war abroad, and poverty athome, how is fair housing going to be delivered? The failed promiseof school integration. So you have a really, really long list ofreasons why people are deeply aggrieved, and the solution comes,well, maybe people could open businesses? Maybe a franchise couldcome into your community? And this doesn't respond to any of thereasons why people were crying out in so much pain. And for me,it's really hard to see that playbook re-emerge in 2020. You know,in the middle of a global pandemic and a crisis of racial justice,you hear some of the similar things. I was just on a call recently,where someone said, you know, "After the George Floyd summer, wecommitted our company to more investment in black business." Butthe reality is that there are nearly 2 million black-ownedbusinesses in the United States. Very few of them have the size,scale, or capacity to provide incredible jobs, and the volume ofjobs necessary to really help rebuild communities. And so I thinkthat, if anything, researching this book just made me more certainthat big state solutions are the only ways we get on the other sideof injustice, and that includes food injustice.
Well, this has been fascinating. So let me end by askinga question about what we can learn from the history of fast food.So what do you think the fast food can teach us about food policyoverall in the US, and how do you believe fast food has shaped therelationship to food?
Well, I think that what we need is an end to what I would callpassive subsidies for the industry. Because when we think about thefact that we can get this type of food so cheaply and so quickly,then we know that there's a series of public policy failures allalong the road to it, whether it is subsidies on corn for highfructose corn syrup, whether it is the lack of a federal minimumwage that allows low wage work to continue, whether it's the factthat we have a lot of the smaller... McDonald's doesn't fit in thiscategory anymore, but some of the smaller fast food franchises thatare qualifying for small business loans. And as a result, thisbecomes a funnel for minority owned businesses, which are morelikely to happen in hyper segregated communities. And so theincentives for opening other types of businesses are fewer thanfast food. We have all of these reasons why this problem persists.And unfortunately, we live in a cultural context in which thepeople who consume the food are blamed for all of the problems andnot the structures that allowed this food to become available. Andso I think that if we really are serious about health and nutritionand all of the complicated issues associated with fast food, thenwe have to stop allowing fast food to set the tone of the way welive. A lot of people, when I was on the road for this book on mybook tour, would say, you know, "This is why I advocate nutritioneducation or gardening," and all of these things. And I said,"These are great, but we have to ask questions about the quality ofpeople's lives." All the access to fresh food doesn't matter if aperson can't pay an electric bill and keep the refrigeratorrunning. And all of the lessons about nutrition and how to preparefood mean nothing, if people are working multiple jobs and don'thave time to prepare food.
The reality is that fast food is a rational and reasonablechoice for good portion of Americans, because of the quality oflife that people are forced to have, because of poverty and beingpart of the working poor. And so if we are serious about this, thenwe need to not let fast food dictate the fact that consuming a lotof calories very quickly makes perfect sense in a culture thatpeople are stretched so thin.
Bio
Marcia Chatelain is a Professor of History and African AmericanStudies at Georgetown University. The author of South SideGirls: Growing up in the Great Migration (Duke UniversityPress, 2015) she teaches about women’s and girls’ history, as wellas black capitalism. Her latest book, Franchise: The GoldenArches in Black America (Liveright Publishing Co./W.W. Norton,2020) examines the intricate relationship among African Americanpoliticians, civil rights organizations, communities, and the fastfood industry. An active public speaker and educational consultant,Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation,the American Association of University Women, and the GermanMarshall Fund of the United States. At Georgetown, she has wonseveral teaching awards. In 2016, the Chronicle of HigherEducation named her a Top Influencer in academia inrecognition of her social media campaign #FergusonSyllabus, whichimplored educators to facilitate discussions about the crisis inFerguson, Missouri in 2014. She has held an Eric and Wendy SchmidtFellowship at New America, a National Endowment for the HumanitiesFaculty Fellowship, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.
