Can you have it your way? The consequences of racial capitalism in fast food in America

Abstract

First paragraph: White Burgers, Black Cash deftly traces the inter­twined history of fast food, race, and capital in America. The goal of this monograph is to chart the racial and spatial pathways fast food has tra­v­eled, from its genesis in the early twentieth cen­tury to the contemporary moment—where it has become heavily concentrated in Black communi­ties. From the onset, Naa Oyo A. Kwate sets the tone for the rest of the study, stating, “Fast food has always been a fundamentally anti-Black enter­prise” (p. xiii). The introduction shows how the anti-Blackness of fast food goes beyond health disparities, and instead is rooted in the subordina­tion of Blackness throughout history. The book sets out to outline the history of fast food’s color line, with an emphasis on three cities: New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. . . .