When I was a child, going to McDonald's was a huge treat for me and my family. It was the seventies, so making a trip to McDonald's was something we did like twice a year. We were eating out! Mom didn't have to cook, and everybody got great burgers and fries.
Later, I got my first paying job at the "black McDonald's" in Clayton, Missouri. Everybody called it black McDonald's because almost all of the staff was black, even though Clayton was almost completely white. That McDonald's was a refuge; it was one of the few places where a black teenager could easily find work in the St. Louis metropolitan area. I was a black kid from the suburbs working her first real job at McDonald's, and I was proud to have the job. I made fries, quarter pounders with cheese at $4.25 per hour. Getting that job was significant for me and it made me love McDonald's forever. In more recent memory, when I started a non-profit with a colleague and times were lean, we would literally count our pennies to buy a $1 burger or $1 fries at McDonald's off the value meal. So, McDonald's has had a special place in my life over the years.
Yes, it's a super corporate, all-American organization, but its constant presence in my life has made McDonald's an important part of my American experience. I will bet that a lot of people feel that way about the place.
Many months ago, a tragedy occurred outside the McDonald's in the neighborhood where I used to live at 125th Street in New York City, better known as East Harlem. Two couples got into a loud argument over an umbrella at the local McDonald's. They took the fight outside, where a man was stabbed to death with a box cutter in the ensuing brawl. The dead man's girlfriend was taken to the hospital with severe stab wounds to her torso. I am not sure if she survived. Can you imagine going to a McDonalds for a burger, and getting killed in a street fight? Now this is just one of many crimes at or near the McDonald's that were reported in the news media; there were other crimes before and since.
Only a few months ago that was my neighborhood McDonald's. It is also a "Black McDonald's" if you hadn't guessed. It is in the inner city on New York's upper, upper Eastside. The clients and the staff are for the most part black, Hispanic, or some other minority, and many seem to be poor. When I lived in the neighborhood, I went to that McDonald's around once a month. Every time I went there I was scared that I would get caught up in a robbery or fight, because there were a few patrons who looked rough, but I went anyway because no one was going to scare me out of my "break today". That would be un-American.
I would note that I have found that I often feel high levels of anxiety at fast food places of all kinds in the inner city--because when I look around me, I see some patrons who make me feel like danger may be imminent. Some could be packing, some could just be looking for action. They make me feel as though danger, of unknown character or caliber, is barely being contained. Until now, I never considered how much tension and stress I endured on body, mind and soul in pursuit of "my break."
These are the facts: I lived in a particularly rough section of the inner city for a couple of years. I moved into the best place that I could find containing what I wanted at the time, for the price (which was not at all cheap)--security, two bedrooms. I also work for an organization that is focused on fighting poverty, so I thought perhaps I should live in areas in which a lot of my neighbors were poor. Living in the inner city was a head trip--there were no "breaks" from the stress, high anxiety and fear. If you went to the bank, you worried that it or you might be robbed (my local bank was robbed many times by people with guns--for a while bank robberies were occurring every couple of months). As my college-aged nieces from the Midwest learned while staying with me on the upper upper East side, merely walking in the neighborhood and stopping by the local Mickey D's to order the quarter pounder value meal can subject you to stressful catcalls - and your response had better not be "disrespectful". There are also plenty of beggars, angry or highly agitated police officers, and a number of homeless people who are just walking around crazy. You literally cannot smoke a cigarette without somebody asking you for one - "just one, or maybe some money". A friend witnessed a woman defecate on the sidewalk when he came by to visit me. And then you also have the displays of violence, like the scene at the McDonald's.
Another friend's bedroom window was shot through--and the bullet's trajectory was such that if she had been home and in bed, she would have likely been shot. While the cast of characters I have described does not constitute the majority -- by any means--of the inner city's residences, they are there and they are part of the scene. They are the vocal minority. A person who lives or works in the inner city is under constant assault.
All of this is to say that it takes a person of enormous talent and drive to endure that kind of trauma and still find the drive and will to do something productive, and find a way out of the inner city. I met a lot of people who were that talented and who were on a path out--but it was still hard for them.
I do not pretend that I was someone who was stuck in the inner city. I had options and when the inner city got to be too much for me and my family, I left. As I packed, I felt that my presence made no difference to the larger community. I wasn't a parent in the neighborhood--I was simply a neighbor and another unrooted one at that. But that might have been a crock and rationalization. I did know though that if all Americans could understand how it feels to live in a rough neighborhood day to day--and the fact that some people live under-resourced and in a perpetual state of instability and physical danger--maybe they'd see them differently and see the challenges that some people face daily, differently. Poor people don't want to be poor; it comes with terrible perks.
That's why I've spent my career working with and leading organizations that exist for the sole purpose of improving the lives of disadvantaged communities across the country--Single Stop, Public Allies, NAACP. These and other not-for-profit organizations work tirelessly to reduce the equality gaps in the areas of education, health, criminal justice, and economic empowerment. They stand for the principle that there should be equal access to opportunity. There should be justice. And when there isn't, we must demand it.