(gentle music)
I am so happy that we are back here on B-Well Together
because we know, now more than ever,
we need to be well.
We need to build resilience and we need to keep
ourselves physically and mentally healthy
so that we can continue to fight for the changes
in the US and all around the world.
So thank you for joining us again this morning.
Today's guest is no stranger to driving change
for racial injustice and how it has really evolved
over recent modern history.
She has led a career dedicated to social movements
including wellness and access to healthy food.
So I am really, really happy to introduce
this morning, Dr. Marcia Chatelain.
She's a Provost Distinguished Associate Professor,
that is so hard to say and I've been practicing
it all morning Marcia, Provost's Distinguished
Associate Professor of History in African American Studies
at Georgetown University.
She is previously a Reach for Excellence Assistant Professor
of Honors in African American Studies
at the University of Oklahoma in Norman,
and she is a scholar, and a speaker,
and a strategist, and an author of African American
life and culture.
So her first book was "South Side Girls" which
kind of reimagined the exodus of Black Southerners
to urban North from the perspective
of girls and teenage women.
Her latest book, which I'm sort of
becoming obsessed with is called
"Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America."
And this examines the intersection
of the post-1968 civil rights struggle
and the rise of the fast food industry.
So we are just delighted to have you with us today Marcia,
I have just been so intrigued in all the research
I have been doing on your latest book
and I am very eager for you to share
this narrative with our Be-Well Together audience.
So welcome.
Thank you so much, and hello everyone in Salesforce.
It is a real pleasure to be here to talk about wellness
as it relates to the study of history.
We know that current events have mad a lot of us
very uneasy and sometime feeling helpless
to make a change.
But one of the things that I have found
from my own personal wellness, in regards to wanting
to know what I can do to be an advocate,
is through the study of history.
So today I'm gonna talk about my new book,
"Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America."
Through the lens of what it teaches us,
not only about what we eat and the choices
we get to make about food, but the ways
that they're connected to politics,
as well as a larger vision of what communities need
after a crisis.
So my book is an examination of the backstory
of images like this.
Many of us are familiar of how news media represents
the problems of obesity and African American communities.
Sometimes we don't even see full pictures
of people's bodies.
We see them cut off and they represent this sense of crisis.
We also know with the current crisis of COVID-19,
pre-existing health conditions have exacerbated
the health outcomes of African Americans
who are fighting the virus.
And so when I see articles like this,
when I see news stories like this,
I always say what do we think about how we got here?
How did we create a society in which African Americans
and other communities of color find themselves
in neighborhoods without access to grocery stores,
a hyper concentration of fast food outlets,
and then having to bear the weight of the consequences
not only of diets that are filled with foods
that we've decided are not nutritious,
but also to be in a position to work in industries
that often pay very low wages.
And so, in writing, "Franchise"
I wanted to write the social history of the obesity crisis.
And instead of scrutinizing the choices people make
in what they eat, I wanna think about
the societal investments that got us here.
So you may be familiar with this guy.
For those of you who are of a certain age,
he was President of the United States once
his name is Bill Clinton.
And one of the enduring images of the Clinton campaign
was the President of the United States eating fast food.
And this became fodder for shows like Saturday Night Live.
But one of the things I thought was really interesting
when I researched Bill Clinton's relationship to fast food
was this quote from Toni Morrison,
which appeared in the "Talk of the Town" section
of the New Yorker.
And it's about this quote that is attributed to her
but often misunderstood when she calls Clinton
the first black president.
And what she was talking about
was the fact that Clinton had been pursued
in her mind relentlessly by Congress
during his impeachment trials.
But the way she describes him as black
includes these descriptions that are tied to stereotypes
single-parent household, born poor,
working-class, saxophone-playing,
McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.
And when I read this article, and I thought
about the representation of the obesity crisis,
I started to think, well, how did we get here?
How did McDonald's become black?
And how did fast food becomes so prevalent
in black communities?
And so moving from Clinton I also thought of images
like this from the news media.
This is from the Ferguson Uprising in 2014.
After Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown.
And one of the images you saw often
if you watched a lot of cable news, like I did
was the McDonald's in Ferguson, Missouri,
as a central feature of the drama,
in which you saw the forces of activists
as well as police coming together in these confrontations.
And again, McDonald's and civil unrest has had
a long history in the United States.
In fact, it was after Martin Luther King's assassination
in Memphis in April 4 1968, that caused this transformation
of the fast food industry, in which white franchise owners
of McDonald's restaurants no longer wanted to do businesses
that were at the center of these uprisings.
And so McDonald's allowed them to move their businesses
to the suburbs, and in their place became
African American franchises.
And this business opportunity not only had McDonald's
interacting with African American consumers
for the first time, but it showed
that the fast food industry,
that if you go into neighborhoods
that have been eviscerated by social unrest
had fewer and fewer options in the marketplace,
you could make a lot of money.
And in that process, McDonald's grafted itself
onto a long history of civil rights struggles.
In the United States, we have about 250,000
fast food restaurants.
And although the franchise model
is seen throughout industries,
whether it's where you get your oil changed,
or the hotel you stand, we often associate franchising
with fast food.
And the franchising model is simple.
You get a blueprint from a parent corporation,
and then the franchisee is responsible for
setting forth a business in a local community.
Franchising however, can be incredibly challenging
for people who do not have lots of access to capital.
And the late 1960s very few African Americans
who wanted a business opportunity
we're able to just go into a bank and get a loan.
But through this franchise initiative,
they were able to use the weight
and the financial resources of established franchises,
as well as a series of programs underwritten
by the federal government to allow
for more African Americans in the franchise sector.
And so McDonald's, a brand that had long been associated
with the Americana of the 1950s,
which had grown up in mostly white suburbs
throughout the 50s and the 60s
was now confronting the changes
of the civil rights movement.
And so after 1960, and the quest to integrate restaurants
and public accommodations, that is seen in this iconic image
from the Greensboro, North Carolina sit in of 1960,
you start to see a shift in the restaurant industry.
What's curious about this, is that very few people know
that McDonald's was actually a target
of the similar types of boycotts
that we associated with brands that are no longer with us,
like Woolworths or Rexall drugs.
In fact, the student nonviolent coordinating committee
was at the forefront of trying
to integrate McDonald's restaurants in the South.
So as the social changes in public accommodations
are happening in the civil rights movement,
McDonald's is starting to understand something
about the changing landscape of American business
as well as black consumer expectations.
And so by the time we get to 1968,
when Martin Luther King's assassination
has inspired a great deal of grief,
and uprisings in American cities,
the question of business becomes front and center
on what to do to repair communities
that had long been left behind.
Signs like this Soul Brother were put in the windows
of black owned businesses in hopes
that it would safeguard against property destruction.
We see very similar images today in cities
across the country that are managing the tensions of unrest.
And so those big signs that you see now
that's a black owned business,
they also have a long history of trying
to communicate the difference between themselves
and outsider businesses that people may associate
with the exploitation of local people.
Why is this so important?
Well, this moment in Memphis creates moments like this.
In 1968, the first African American franchise
McDonald's opens in Chicago.
And it is a restaurant that has been abandoned
by a white franchise owner.
And it becomes not just a symbol of a new business
in a community, but perhaps the hope
that by establishing businesses
in African American communities,
African Americans will experience something
that white consumers have long experienced
comfort in patronizing a restaurant or store
without fear of discrimination,
and with the sense that this will reinvest
into their communities.
So throughout the 1970s articles like this appear
in the African American press,
celebrating the entry of African American franchise owners
into the McDonald's system, other fast food
restaurants follow suit.
And so Burger King, KFC and the other major brands
start recruiting African American franchise owners.
But it's not just about the food
throughout the 1970s groups like this one in Cleveland
boycotted McDonald's.
Again, not because they were denied service,
but because they started to make demands for ownership
within the community.
You also see moments like this.
This is a protest in Portland Oregon,
where the Black Panther Party for self defense
protested McDonald's, not because they're bothered
by McDonald's in their community,
but they want McDonald's to start contributing
to the free breakfast program for children.
So by the mid 1970s, McDonald's has to understand itself
in relationship to African American communities.
And this is no different than some of the ways
that we understand social entrepreneurship,
a community relations, social philanthropy,
business community partnerships.
I argue that this experiment into African American
communities and the pushback as well as the compromises
that are being made about McDonald's
contributes to our landscape today
of understanding business and social responsibility.
And throughout the book, I talk about
various moments of tension with the idea of fast food.
In Portland and in Philadelphia in the Ogontz neighborhood
there are protests against McDonald's,
as well as attempts on the part
of African American celebrities
to compete against McDonald's arguing
we are an authentically black owned business.
So Mohammed Ali, the boxer starts his own burger company
called Champ Burger, it does not succeed.
Mahalia Jackson the gospel singers
starts a chain of fried chicken restaurants
that look like churches that are
it's called Glori-Fried Chicken.
And so all of these attempts to what I call
Bending the Golden Arches at the center of it
is this question, is buying black
is having a black owned business critical
for the survival and the growth
of African American communities.
And again, these are the same questions
that are being asked today.
Throughout my book, I talk about the cultural work
of the fast food industry.
It's not just about the food.
It's about advertising that connects
to African American consumers like these
from the iconic Burrell Communications Company,
based out of Chicago, which was really the leader
in marketing to African Americans.
It's the fact that African American franchise owners
helped underwrite the celebration
of the Martin Luther King holiday,
which didn't become a federal holiday until 1983.
It's about the sponsorship of gospel music tours,
and Double Dutch Leagues and All American Basketball.
And so I present these ideas so that when we talk
about food justice, we often talk about
people again making choices about what they eat,
but rarely do we understand that in situations
where there are very few or limited resources,
the connections that people make to companies
are also about this critical cultural work.
So if you want people to stop eating french fries
and start eating kale, you have to understand
that the fast food industry has an impact
in the totality of communities.
And that's why sometimes these arguments are hard to make.
As the story concludes into the 1980s,
I talk about the partnerships between
the Black McDonald's Operators Association
and civil rights organization,
like the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People in the Urban League,
two charities that McDonald's recently announced
that they will be donating to,
but they've also had a long relationship
with the civil rights organizations
as they facilitated partnerships
in order to open more of these restaurants
in African American communities.
And so you really see the catch 22
that leaders found themselves in,
in welcoming the fast food industry
and understanding the health consequences.
And finally, my story kind of ends
where my inquiry began.
And this is a picture of a McDonald's in Los Angeles
during the 1992, Los Angeles Uprisings
and after that week of turmoil concluded in Los Angeles,
McDonald's sent a press release that argued,
that the reason why it was not a target
of any property damage during that week
was because of this long relationship
it had an African American communities.
And we understand when we take a full historical view
of these pictures, the complications.
And so as our former first lady wanted young people
to move and make discerning nutritional choices,
as we see the continued fight for better wages
and better working conditions,
especially as the fast food industry
has become among the frontline in the response to COVID
we have to ask ourselves critical questions
about how we understand business as delivering
a set of options in communities
as well as the complicated ways
when communities look to business to nourish it,
some of the things that we miss.
and so I'm looking forward to your questions
and comments about this very complicated history.
But I always return to something that is important to me.
The more and more we're able to interrogate history
and be critical of the processes
that perhaps limit other people's choices,
we become more empathetic and sympathetic
to the conditions in which people are forced to live under,
and we become more patient and generous with ourselves
as we struggle to make a change.
Thank you.
Oh my gosh, I am just I love this.
I love this.
And I think that one of the reasons
that I'm just so intrigued by this
is it just feels like it's like right under our noses.
You know, like, I mean, there's McDonald's everywhere.
And, you know, your story is so compelling
around the opportunity and the hope
and the promise and the rebuilding of communities
that this was supposed to provide.
And you know, a link to just,
you know decades of terrible health.
And it's so complex, it's so complex.
And I think what it allows us to do
if we take it from that perspective,
is that we understand that when people are making choices,
and we want them to change their choices,
we always have to remember the context
in which those choices were created.
And we also have to recognize that any type of issue
that we are confronted with today
is going to require a lot of steps in the beginning.
So had the response after 1968,
be okay businesses are important,
but let's get people's health.
Let's look at people.
Let's look at the minimum wage in America.
What are the other ways that we can rebuild communities
because what I am concerned about now
is that after this moment becomes quieter,
and after we have to draft legislation,
and we put resources in, what kind of resources
will communities that have been starved
for a very long time, what will they get?
What will be their options?
And can we imagine opportunities
that don't require so many compromises?
Absolutely.
And I mean that kind of touches
on something that I'm feeling 'cause I fear for that too.
I fear for there's a moment there's a movement
that is happening now.
And what happens when it quiets down.
And as an ally, as I'm trying to figure out
how to best invest my energies and my time and my resources.
Knowing something is so complex like this,
and you spent a good deal of time studying this.
I'm curious from your perspective,
like where's the best place to start?
Is it with health?
Is it with politics?
Is it with economics?
Is it with social injustices?
Like where do we start?
Because it's not a quick fix.
But you know, you want to feel like
I think as you're trying to get involved,
that you're making impact and that you're
grabbing others with you on this movement,
and that you're seeing change or feeling
you're a part of something better.
And I just feel very overwhelmed and knowing like,
where, where.
So I often tell people start with history
because you'll know the good ideas and the bad ideas.
Because we unfortunately live in a country
where all are very good ideas.
We never were patient enough or committed enough
to see if they could flourish.
You know school integration happened in a lot of cities.
People did not sit and wait for it to flourish.
The second that it started, it was derailed
by legislation, derailed by Supreme Court cases.
You know, we had a time where we were
going to do universal childcare in this country.
And then a political force came and said, no, no, no
that's socialism, that's communism,
and then it gets derailed.
So when we look back, we have these incredible ideas
that no one tried.
You know, we had these really powerful
community organizations in the 60s and 70s.
And then someone said, okay, they're challenging too much,
let's defund them, right.
So I think what I always find solaces
is that people did come up with good ideas.
They were imaginative.
But what did it take for people to stay committed?
They needed more information, they couldn't succumb to fear.
And they really had to see that.
Okay, what is on, what's around the corner
If we make these sacrifices?
If made I think a pandemic, that experience
of living through a pandemic, it chastens all of us.
We don't know what we're made of, until we're kind of,
you know put to a moment of crisis.
And I think that we can feel that on a policy level
when we learn about these ideas
that we're never allowed to grow.
Yeah, so we've got to be patient
and we have to study and we have to like
really keep investing long after the things start
to quiet down.
We have to keep going.
Okay.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
So for many of you know, many of you may not know,
but we have like many companies,
we have amazing employee resource groups in our company
and we call them the quality groups
and bold force is the equality group
for our black community.
And they've been doing amazing work
and helping our company learn and grow together
during this time.
And so I thought it would be nice today
to have a guest moderator.
So I would like to welcome the Efosa Ogbomo
who is our bold for global finance chair.
Efosa are you there?
Yes, I am.
Good morning, Jody.
Great, welcome.
So I think that you also had a couple of questions
and there may be questions coming in from chatter.
So I invite you and welcome you
to the Be-Well Together stage to.
You can grill Dr. Marcia a little bit (laughs).
All right thank you.
I think just kind of piggybacking off Jodi's last question
for Dr. Chatelain.
Many of these instances of institutionalized racism
you outlined took place over the span of decades
and their impacts clearly lasted generations.
Do you see any progress in these injustices
or steps in the right direction that are happening?
Well I'm always just so moved by people's willingness
to stay committed, because I think that's
what we need to see.
Perseverance is a strong argument.
And so, you know, I like that people are doing
history memes now, and one of the memes
that's circulating is about how long the
Montgomery bus boycott was.
This is like a year of people not on the buses,
people having to coordinate rides for each other
people having to get car insurance in different countries
in order to kind of move forward.
And so for me, we are persistent.
We are we're built for persistence.
But for those of us in positions of privilege,
rarely is that tested.
And I think we have to remind ourselves of that.
And so I'm always moved by the fact that
the conversation is so different, you know,
since 2014, I remember when the idea of Black Lives Matter
was so radicalized, and now people are understanding
the depth and the substance of that statement.
And so a lot of you know, a lot of unlikely figures
are saying, okay, I can kind of wrap my head around it.
That takes time.
But that only happened because the movement
for Black Lives has continued to grow
and add more nuance and add more layers.
Had the first time someone said,
oh, Black Lives Matter.
That's too much.
I can't handle it, that people who were committed
to the principles were like, okay
then we're just gonna pack up our stuff,
then we wouldn't be at this particular moment
where people have a deep curiosity, desire to do more.
So I'm always kind of just moved by how quickly
we can change the discourse because of the persistence
of people who know what's right in their gut
and are willing to pivot in different ways
to demonstrate it.
Absolutely.
So persistence is key.
I think with everything that we do.
I did wanna ask a question from a former student of yours
and current Salesforce employee.
And she said, "I know you take great pride
"in having started the #fergusonsyllabus,
"which was a way for educators to engage with their students
"on the topic of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
"Six years later, we are still fighting the same fight.
"But I think we can recognize that the protests
"are significantly different this time.
"The way the world has been engaging
"with our protests is unprecedented.
"What conversations would you hope to start
"this time around with your students?
" And what do you know, would you want us
"to know about how history remember these events"?
I think that what has happened over those six years
and why I think is so important,
a lot of people didn't understand
when they were presented with the idea
that the movement for Black Lives wasn't about
one organization with one leader.
This kind of decentralized leadership structure
and a lot of people from the generation
of the civil rights movement of the 1950s.
So I don't get it, how can you not have one head
and lots, you know a leadership cabinet
and what they were saying, which I think
we're understanding now is that leadership emerges
from the community and from the people
and the context in which they're working.
So that the movement for Black Lives in Los Angeles,
in Omaha, Nebraska, in Chicago,
in Washington DC, in Toronto looks different,
because people are identifying different needs
in those places.
And I think a lot of people didn't get what that could mean.
And now we're seeing the power of it
because we're also in a pandemic,
where one of the things I think is amazing
is the rise of mutual aid societies.
This is something from like the 18th century,
that local--
Talk about patience!
Yeah you know like people are saying,
wait a second our local community knows
that this is what we need.
Local people are gonna identify the problem,
and they're gonna define the solutions.
And I think there's a new appreciation
for that because we've seen the way it works.
And so that I think is amazing.
The second thing is that the movement for black lives
really raised consciousness about police violence,
as well as racist civilian violence,
which I think is important.
It's the distinctions between what happened
to Trayvon Martin versus what happened to George Floyd.
But at the center of it, right?
It's this idea of violence and the value of human life.
And I think that, that is such a central part
of what we are seeing right now,
where people are saying, I don't wanna bear witness
to this type of violence in a person's life.
I don't need to know them.
I don't need them to be perfect.
I don't need them to be the person that I would want
as my neighbor my or family that if something
is an injury to one of us, it's an injury to all of us.
I think that, that has been a lot better now
than I've seen in the past.
And then the last thing I think is that
what surfaced after Ferguson was
a real consciousness raising on a national level
about like the dynamics of policing,
how it is also decentralized.
It's also so local, like people didn't understand
that there's no kind of one set of rules that police follow.
And then at the local level when it was failing
people had a clear sense of what to attack,
and then had a sense of what the federal government
through the Department of Justice could do.
It was an incredible civics lesson,
that I think people are now in some of their critiques
of reform, versus defund or dismantle.
They're able to have better conversations
because of the civics lesson that they learned
after Ferguson.
Thank you for that.
I think we have time for one more question.
So what I want to ask is obviously the food industry
has been hit really hard with the pandemic,
over the last few weeks, and there's been increasing
discussions around the topic of, of food deserts,
especially in underserved communities.
What would you want people to know about food deserts
and how they can educate themselves on that?
So if you care about food justice,
this is what I want you to understand.
The first one is that the period of time
I'm talking about up into the present,
the classification of fast food restaurants
as small businesses for the purposes of access to capital
is really, really important.
Because if a fast food franchise is considered
a small business and a grocery store isn't
the capacity for communities that are in rebuild mode,
to get a franchise versus a supermarket is vastly different.
The second thing I want people to know is that
fast food is sometimes the most rational,
best choice for a person to make.
If you want to live in a world
where people are not consuming so much fast food
and dealing with the health consequences,
then you have to wanna live in a world
where people don't have to work two or three jobs.
I grew up with a mom who worked two to three jobs,
eating fast food made perfect sense for her in her context,
you get a lot of sugar, you get a fat,
you get carbohydrates, you're going to your next job.
Had my mom worked fewer jobs, she probably
would have made more food at home.
And the last thing is that when we are concerned
about food deserts or what we call food apartheid,
we also have to understand the structural conditions
that allow people to either keep food refrigerated
and safe and healthy or not.
So if you are concerned about whether or not
people have good food to eat, the next question
is do they have enough electricity
in their home for a refrigerator?
Can they afford their electric bills?
I'm from the Midwest after a very cold winter
people's gas bills and their heating bills.
Once that gas is shut off, they can now not cook food.
That's the question I want you to ask.
I want you to ask who is supplying the food
to your your local schools cafeteria?
whether or not you have a kid at that school.
If that's an issue for you, you've got to attack it.
You have to understand that none of us
consumes anything in one context.
And once you start asking all of the little questions
about context you realize how this is tied
into economic justice and health justice.
And then you find the place that really really inspires you
and you work from that place.
You are a remarkable woman.
Thank you, so much.
Thank you so much for spending your morning with us.
I hope everyone goes out and gets this book.
It's called again, it's called
"Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America."
I am so eager to get my hands on this book.
And I'm so grateful for your time this morning.
Thank you very, very much.
Be well Salesforce and if you wanna
continue the conversation, I spend way too much time
on Twitter like most folks, so I'd love
to hear your questions and your comments.
Thank you so much.
That's great. Tell us what your Twitter handle is
so we can follow you.
It's @DrMChatelain.
So doctor D-R-M and then my last name
and feel free to tweet a storm.
I'm at home.
I've got time.
Fantastic.
Thank you everyone.
So glad that we're back together again.
Be happy, be well.
Goodbye.
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