Why read Burgers in Blackface?

Book cover of Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now

Book description

Exposes and explores the prevalence of racist restaurant branding in the United States

Aunt Jemima is the face of pancake mix. Uncle Ben sells rice. Chef Rastus shills for Cream of Wheat. Stereotyped Black faces and bodies have long promoted retail food products that are household names. Much less visible…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Burgers in Blackface as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrea Freeman

Author

A restaurant where customers walked through a caricatured Black man’s mouth to enter? A fine dining establishment that advertised itself as a Slave Market? An eatery housed in a giant mammy that sells mammy-shaped lamps? This sounds like a racist dystopia, but it’s not–it is the reality documented in Naa Oyo A. Kwate’s book about racist restaurants, past and present. You may feel queasy about going out to eat after ingesting these sordid tales.

From Andrea's list on food that won’t make you hungry.