Published by Civil Eats

Why in the U.S. today are fast-food restaurants disproportionately found in neighborhoods with predominantly Black residents? In her new book, academic Naa Oyo A. Kwate answers that question with a thorough, compelling history of systemic racism in the fast-food industry. The public health crisis resulting from fast-food consumption cannot be attributed to individual choice, Kwate argues. “If we are concerned with diet, obesity, and chronic disease, the food environment must be interrogated,” she writes, “and for Black neighborhoods, that means a landscape where segregation quarantines disproportionate densities of fast food.” The book charts the evolution of fast food from the birth of the industry in the early 1900s to the present, primarily in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. In an important narrative that is rich with both Black historical figures and jarring, behind-the-scenes facts about the nation’s biggest fast-food chains, Kwate recounts a century of racism—from the initial exclusion of Black Americans from fast food under Jim Crow laws to the industry’s present-day targeting of urban Black communities. “The story of fast food’s relationship to Black folks is a story about America itself,” she writes.