Another #book on my reading wishlist.
White Burgers, Black Cash
Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation
By: Naa Oyo A. Kwate
The long and pernicious relationship between #FastFoodRestaurants and the #AfricanAmerican community.
Today, #FastFood is disproportionately located in #BlackNeighborhoods and marketed to #BlackAmericans through targeted #advertising. But throughout much of the 20th century, fast food was developed specifically for White urban and suburban customers, purposefully avoiding Black spaces. In White Burgers, Black Cash, Naa Oyo A. Kwate traces the evolution in fast food from the early 1900s to the present, from its long #history of #RacistExclusion to its current damaging embrace of urban #BlackCommunities.
Fast food has historically been tied to the country’s self-image as the #LandOfOpportunity and is marketed as one of life’s simple pleasures, but a more insidious history lies at the industry’s core. White Burgers, Black Cash investigates the complex trajectory of restaurant locations from a decided commitment to #Whiteness to the #disproportionate densities that characterize Black communities today. Kwate expansively charts fast food’s racial and spatial transformation and centers the cities of #Chicago, #NewYork City, and #WashingtonDC, in a national examination of the biggest brands of today, including #WhiteCastle, #KFC, #BurgerKing, #McDonalds, and more.