Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain
Review of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain.
“Fast food is a prism for understanding race, shifts in the movement for civil rights, the dissemination of black culture, and racial capitalism—the deep connections between the development of modern capitalism and racist subjugation and oppression—since the 1960s.”
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain (2020). Published by Liveright.
I discovered this book, like many other people, when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021. I wanted to read it immediately due to its subject matter, as someone who grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore is a city known for its poverty, and something I often heard about was the concept of a food desert. Many poorer neighborhoods in these parts don’t have access to fresh vegetables, so the people are addicted to the fast food that is only around them. It’s really sad, one of my mother’s coworkers would love this one drink but couldn’t find it anywhere because there’s no grocery store in the ghetto he lives in, and so my mother would buy it for him and take it to work.
Franchise touches upon the themes of capitalism and race in contemporary American history, specifically when McDonalds began to popularize the concept of franchises. Black Americans were specifically targeted as franchise owners, and many were eager because they thought that they could get a leg up economically if they owned a McDonalds. And, as we dig into with this book, that isn’t exactly the case.
This book really is a necessary read in understanding the impact of fast food on Black America, not even just health-wise, but economically. Let’s dig into why.
Book Blurb
Often blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, fast food restaurants like McDonald’s have long symbolized capitalism’s villainous effects on our nation’s most vulnerable communities. But how did fast food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods in the first place? In Franchise, acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who—in the troubled years after King’s assassination—believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality. With the discourse of social welfare all but evaporated, federal programs under presidents Johnson and Nixon promoted a new vision for racial justice: that the franchising of fast food restaurants, by black citizens in their own neighborhoods, could finally improve the quality of black life. Synthesizing years of research, Franchisetells a troubling success story of an industry that blossomed the very moment a freedom movement began to wither.
Content
The author of this lovely book is a PhD holder in American Civilizations, and works within the History and African American Studies at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.—this brings up to our topic, black capitalism and the history of franchising, specifically McDonalds. We get a clear look at the beginning of the fast food industry in the United States, completely dominated by white men. In the case of Taco Bell, for example, a white man is “inspired” by Mexican food, waters it down into an American palate, and makes millions off of it. But our focus isn’t Taco Bell; it’s McDonalds.
Originally created to serve the military families in San Bernardino, California, McDonalds was out of reach for many African-Americans. Left without stable incomes, they were the last to be hired and the first to be fired everywhere in the United States due to racism and discrimination. As McDonalds begins to expand and replicates Ford’s machinery line, but in fast food, we see how inner cities and Black-dominated neighborhoods are avoided. Until, as civil rights comes and goes, the Black dollar is seen as profitable. That’s when we begin to see how Black capitalism and the franchise system becomes complicit in inequality.
At the end of the day, this book is a glimpse into how the franchise system offers hope and economic advancement for Black America, but that isn’t necessarily true. Via sneaky advertising and promotional methods, we think that it is better, and people begin to encourage entire communities to become franchise owners, which actually worsens the situation of the community. Today, in the modern era, we see how this becomes a racial disparity in access to healthy foods, as poorer neighborhoods have a larger concentration of fast food restaurants compared to, say, access to fresh vegetables.
This is a very fascinating book, well-researched and well-written. I didn’t struggle to comprehend the topics introduced in it and I felt like I came out of it with a lot more knowledge than I started. It exposes how capitalism and racism often blend into the same invention, one in which is right before out eyes.
Overall Thoughts
I think this was an interesting read, one in which is extremely necessary understand fast food and how it’s more than just a diet. As a researcher and someone studying gender and race in urban centers, I find myself drawn to well-researched nonfiction books like these because they show how interwoven all of these complicated topics are. Food deserts are a very real problem in the United States, especially in inner cities populated largely by poor minorities, particularly black Americans, who find their only sources of food to be these restaurants. And these marketing campaigns want us to believe that the companies are all for racism and food discrimination when in fact they’re majorly contributing to a massive problem that perpetrates inequality. I recommend this as a necessary read, although it might be a difficult at times.
