Why a new nationwide boycott of McDonald’s feels like just deserts

Of all the companies to announce a rollback to their DEI policies, McDonald’s January announcement may count as the biggest betrayal. Those swearing off Big Macs, Quarter Pounders and McCafé lattes during a weeklong national boycott of the Golden Arches scheduled to end Monday may be withholding their money not just because Mickey D’s disavowal of DEI policies is upsetting by itself. They may also be doing so because for so long McDonald’s portrayed itself as one of Black people’s day ones — a company that’s always had Black people’s back.

For so long McDonald’s portrayed itself as a company that’s always had Black people’s back.

The group organizing this boycott, The People’s Union, has already helped organize recent boycotts of other major companies that have retracted their DEI policies. “This is a show of strength, solidarity, and people-powered change,” the group’s founder, John Schwarz, wrote in an Instagram post. “Let them feel it. Let them hear us. Let this be just the beginning.”

As for the boycott, McDonald’s isn’t lovin’ it. “As a brand that serves millions of people every day,” the company said in a statement, “McDonald’s opens our doors to everyone, and our commitment to inclusion remains steadfast.” Even so, the company announced in January that it is “retiring setting aspirational representation goals,” “pausing external surveys,” “retiring Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion” and “evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team.”

In this political climate — one perhaps best described as a great white backlash to the 20th-century freedom movements, if not to the Civil War itself — we’ve seen some companies quickly wave the white flag as President Donald Trump has vowed to come after their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. And we’ve seen others put up a fight.

We might have expected McDonald’s to be one of the ones fighting back the hardest. After all, in 2009, the fast-food chain created the now-defunct 365black.com — because “we believe that African-American culture and achievement should be celebrated 365 days a year.” The site insisted that the company was “deeply rooted” in the Black community and that like “the unique African Baobab tree, which nourishes its community with its leaves and fruit, McDonald’s has branched out to the African-American community nourishing it with valuable programs and opportunities.”

I don’t know about all that. McDonald’s as nourishment is as absurd metaphorically as it is literally. Even so, the chain’s legendary — and mockable — “Calvin ads,” its erstwhile promotion of Black entrepreneurship, its sponsorship of major African American cultural events and its funding for scholarships for students at historically Black colleges and universities did give the company a cachet in the Black community that few companies its size could match.

Then suddenly in January, citing “the shifting legal landscape,” the company announced a new “‘Golden Rule’ — treating everyone with dignity, fairness and respect, always.” Beneath the PR speak, McDonald’s let us know that at least some of its DEI commitments were, much like the McRib, limited time only.

It’s important to acknowledge that boycott fatigue is real. I can’t think of a time in my life life as a consumer when I wasn’t being asked to, or didn’t naturally feel inspired to, boycott something. A restaurant chain that eventually settled for $54 million after Black customers alleged routine discrimination; an oil company that eventually settled for $15.5 million after accusations it participated in human rights abuses in Nigeria; another oil company that eventually shelled out $21 billion after despoiling the Gulf of Mexico; a small grocery chain whose owner was photographed at President Donald Trump’s rally at the Elipse on Jan. 6, 2021; the whole state of Florida — first for its “stand your ground” law and later because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attacks on what he terms “wokeness.” It can feel like at times like you shouldn’t buy anything anywhere.

It can feel like at times like you tshouldn’ buy anything anywhere.

McDonald’s, though, is a different case — much like Target, which has been hammered by boycotts since its own DEI rollback. Both companies enjoyed a kind of favored status among Black consumers (in Target’s case due in large part to partnerships with Black entrepreneurs). And both companies’ moves away from DEI policies have been felt acutely as a betrayal. And their executives seemed not to have understood that because they’re associated with fast food and impulse buys, consumers might actually feel virtuous not spending with them.

For whatever reason, the first quarter of this year was McDonald’s worst since the height of the pandemic in 2020. Target’s foot traffic has been falling most of the year.

After McDonald’s January announcement, Marcia Chatelain, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” explained in a column for BLN that the chain’s history of trying to court Black Americans goes back at least as far 1968, in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. In addition McDonald’s efforts recruiting Black franchise owners, choosing Black celebrities for commercials and spending heavily with Black media companies, Chatelain pointed out that:

If nothing else, the moves of corporations like McDonald’s have signaled to Black consumers that they shouldn’t expect their loyalty to any company to get them any loyalty in return. Who knows how many of these boycotts seeking to punish companies for abandoning DEI will be successful? But in too many cases, companies that once aggressively courted black consumers now take those same consumers for granted. And that feeling of being taken for granted is understandably making some portion of people proud not to have any McDonald’s money.

Jarvis DeBerry

Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for BLN Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune.