Manufacturing Dissent Since 1996
New interviews throughout the week

Fast Food's Bad Bargain For Black America / Naa Oyo A. Kwate

Burgers

This is part of the major problem of how fast food has operated with the Black community, because it meant that Black people literally had to eat their way into the society. The only way to participate in this market was literally to consume, like to eat. And so to make franchising the means by which this community is supposed to not only accrue individual wealth for the franchisees, but supposedly for the rest of this community: well what does that actually mean then? Then how many restaurants have to be there? And how many burgers do I have to eat, so that my community can benefit, you know what I mean? So it sets up a very dangerous proposition that your worth is based on what you can consume and not just in the general sense of consumption, of buying, but in this case literally consuming, eating. Eating these products and what that means for your health, for your body, for everything.

We're joined by Dr. Naa Oyo A. Kwate who is on to discuss her recent book "White Burgers, Black Cash," about the affect of the Fast Food industry on Black America.

Share Tweet Send

 

Kwate head
Guest

Naa Oyo A. Kwate, Ph. D

Naa Oyo A. Kwate is an interdisciplinary social scientist with wide ranging interests in racial inequality and African American health. Currently a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago, she is an associate professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, jointly appointed in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of Human Ecology. A psychologist by training, her research has centered primarily on the ways in which urban built environments reflect and create racial inequalities in the United States, and how racism directly and indirectly affects African American health. Kwate’s research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and by fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the European Institutes for Advanced Studies, and others.

 

Related Interviews