Why Are American-Inspired Burger Joints So Racist?

For over half a century, American burgers have been weaving their way into Australia’s food scene. But in recent years, our copycat obsession with this fast food staple has mimicked another unsavoury factor in US society — anti-black racism.

As Australia enters its ‘third wave’ of its American burger obsession as Good Food observed, more needs to be done to ensure that the venues, management, and menus taking inspiration from African-American culture are sensitive to racial dynamics they might be adopting along the way.

In July, for example, a Kanye West-inspired burger venue in Melbourne was forced to rebrand after the US rapper admonished them through his legal representatives. College Dropout Burgers had to cull the names of its dishes, including the ‘Zingers in Paris’ fried chicken number; riffed off Ye’s 2011 track featuring Jay Z, and using a pun in place of the n-word.

It’s not the first time an Australian burger joint has made an uncomfortable reference about people of colour, or chosen to appropriate African-American vernacular and idols to make a buck with a side of fries.

In fact, it’s right on par with a continuous trend over the last decade, that if not openly discussed, will continue to happen again, and again, and again.

Recipe For Disaster

Mapping out a list of examples made public in the last five or so years, a common thread emerges: restaurateurs like burgers, puns, rap music, or the vision of America that exists in their heads from TV and movies — and so combine them all into a business model to be lapped up by like-minded customers.

From the ‘Piggie Smalls’ roll at coffee franchise Piccolo Me, to Perth’s Thuggs listing menu dedications to the Wu-Tang Clan and Busta Rhymes, Australia’s fascination with Black America — particularly, but not limited to, the violence of East Coast-West Coast rivalry — is well established.

Sydney rotisserie venue Birdy’s retracted a cheese chicken waffle sandwich titled ‘the swizzle ma nizzle’ last year, while 15 minutes up the road, RnB and hip hop club The Carter was called out in 2017 for it’s ‘Barack Obama’ platter featuring watermelon and fried chicken.

“Australians [pluck] things out of African American culture without any context, understanding, and obviously without permission…”

That same year, Brisbane cafe Master Toms, inspired by the state of California, named a burger ‘Uncle Tom’, after a fictional slave representing subservience to white masters. A year before that, in 2016, Melbourne’s FAT (Fried and Tasty) was criticised for plastering a ‘happy slave’ Aunt Jemima advertisement on their walls as a display of authentic, “1950s artwork”.

The same critique ran through in all these instances, especially when called out in the public domain — that a simple web search would have quickly enlightened them to the stereotypes and convoluted history they were tapping into.

North Carolinian writer Tyree Barnette told Junkee that when the initial shock at the frequency and inappropriateness of the above examples wore off, he was mostly unsurprised.

“I think there’s been a pretty good history here, especially since I’ve been in Australia over the last decade or so, of Australians plucking things out of African-American culture without any context, understanding, and obviously without permission,” he said.

A Burger Zeitgeist

The first Australian burgers are thought to have hit our tastebuds between the 1920s and 1940s; through the opening of cannery giants Edgell and Golden Circle, that were evolved and cemented in Greek-owned milk bars designed in the image of late-night diners.

Our go-to combo is a relaxed take, albeit rarer these days — a barbecued patty, with sharp cheddar, lettuce, tomato, maybe some grilled onion or pineapple, beetroot, with a fried egg slapped on.

Now, the market is a reflection of the kairotic aftermath of the launch of McDonald’s, which condensed the dish down to the humble hamburger (Australia’s first Maccas opened in 1971 in Yagoona, NSW) — later inspiring a stacked-to-the-max, grandiose product also conceived in the American spirit.

“The first place that wasn’t McDonald’s to serve an American cheeseburger to my knowledge was Lotus in 2008, when Dan Hong became the head chef,” Sydney food journalist Nicholas Jordan explained to Junkee of the tide turner, approximately two years after Rockpool Bar & Grill’s delving into the chef-made burger. “And in 2013, Mary’s and Chur Burger opened — it was certainly the start of the wave of people kind of taking burgers seriously, and the culture developing here.”

Cult Following

Their unsurprising popularity steamrolled the start of new Aussie-owned American burger venues popping up everywhere, even spurring the Facebook page ‘The Fatties Burger Appreciation Society‘ which still boasts a massive following to this day.

“Things started changing a lot in post-social media times,” said Jordan, noting the nostalgia factor of fast food growing up for many Australians. This cultural capital, he explained, is not only accessible in the mainstream, but also relatable, and tied up in a personality inspiration from American media that Australians have consumed their whole lives.

“A lot of people who don’t usually engage with food in their life in a big way can engage with burgers,” said Jordan.

“It’s such a common and visually present symbol in society — there’s burgers in the TV shows and movies you watch, the President of the USA eats burgers.”

“In an age where the things you consume have to say something about who you are, you’re sharing your life experience with the world,” he said of foodie posting online. “Maccas doesn’t really tell a story of what an interesting person you are in the way that going to the brand new cool burger place you found did.”

Appreciation Versus Appropriation

“In the vast Australian burger market, we too often see venues that are built on gimmicks and fads,” reflected Director of Slim’s Quality Burger Nik Rollison in a July statement for a new inspired diner venue, also, notably inspired by “1950s and ‘60s Americana”.

“Whether it’s the cheesiest burger or doughnut buns, we think Aussies have come full circle, and want something that is simple, affordable, and made from only the highest quality ingredients.”

However, it’s privilege that allows Australian burger joints to pick-and-chose what they want from the American burger phase — to pivot that 360 degrees in any direction they choose, and decide when society is done and dusted with the cultures they cherry pick from, regardless of the harm caused along the way.

What does it mean to be able to throw away a muse after squeezing it down to the pulp?

“Black and brown communities are giving … but they often don’t reap the economic benefits from their labour, their knowledge, and their techniques…”

Sydney cultural cringe documenter Struthless captured the modern day, hip hop-infused burger phenomenon well in a satirical 2018 video that picked at the absurdity of relying on these references for clout.

“Now you’ve got a chicken burger,” he says in ‘How To Start A Burger Shop‘. It’s important that it’s a little bit racist — not super racist, just a little bit racist,” he joked.

Without the lived experience or context behind the fascination, the inadvertent offensive outcomes of latching a foreign culture inevitably play out every time.

“It’s my theory that African-American culture is the most commercialised culture in the world,” said Barnette, who as a writer and soul food expert, has seen first-hand the way Australia fetishises American blackness for novelty, without giving credit to the people they borrowed from.

“I think that many people from all over the world see themselves in hip hop culture — in the boldness, in the clothes, the attitude. It even translates over into popular sports, popular music, and African American Vernacular English (AAVE),” he said.

“Many times, black and brown communities are giving, and want to show their food culture, but they often don’t reap the economic benefits from their labour, their knowledge, and their techniques,” he said.

What’s The Big Deal?

When push comes to shove, an American-inspired burger is never just a meal. While people dismiss criticisms and nuanced conversation as political correctness gone wild, good intentions shouldn’t be a blanket absolution for wrongdoing.

“Sometimes I think it’s difficult from a language perspective — the word ‘racism’ is so loaded in itself,” said Jordan, referring back to the eponymous Obama platter at The Carter. “They had a little bit of a social media shit storm around them, and they kind of brushed it aside. Maybe from their perspective, if people were calling them racist, their immediate reaction was, ‘no we’re not racist obviously. We just love American stuff!'”

When racism exists on a spectrum from microaggressions all the way through to heinous systemic human rights abuses, it creates a cognitive dissonance that makes it harder for the people at fault to admit and learn from their mistakes.

But nothing exists in a vacuum without precedence or implication.

“Whenever you base a characteristic that you see in popular media across an entire people, and then when you try to mimic or copy that characteristic, without understanding modern context — appropriation, discrimination — it then not only erases and hurts the people that you took the piece of culture or item from, but it also furthers the assumptions that all those people are a certain way,” said Barnette.

Sense And Sensibility

For any burger joints looking to stay in line, Barnette offered that it’s as simple as doing your homework for basic due diligence.

“No one is going to burn you at the stake for a mistake or accident, but when you chose to name your restaurant or your burger a particular name, what sort of research and vetting did you do?” he asked.

“Did you know it was a slur? Did you know it was derogatory? Did you know the history of the people and how that word came about?” he said. “It’s definitely on the business owner to ensure that when they’re naming their products, if it’s from an outside culture, to do their research. You can Google anything.”

“If it’s from an outside culture … do [your] research. You can Google anything…”

Jordan agrees, saying the misalignment can be fixed with education. “Australia is an extremely multicultural place, we’re also taking so many influences from other countries as well,” he said.

He continued that he’s hopeful the young people of today won’t make the same mistakes as consumers and future vendors, as they are learning how to think about, respectfully learn, and engage with diversity through Instagram and TikTok.

“People older than that just haven’t learnt how to think or interact with different cultures,” said Jordan. “And when it comes to profiting off them, then there needs to be an extra lens on that.”

Barnette said that it’s comforting to know that as culture progresses, society matures, and disenfranchised populations who have had to put up with being labelled or portrayed in a negative way slowly but surely start to gain a voice.

“What we’re doing is we are correcting the historical context of where a term or derogatory depiction came from,” he said. “With each generation, we get a little bit better at being human, and a little bit better at understanding each other.”

“That’s not to say that all things are off limits, but everything has context and history, and not all things are meant to be plucked, discovered, or taken without permission.”

---

Millie Roberts is Junkee’s social justice reporter. Follow her on Twitter.

Photo Credit: amirali mirhashemian/Unsplash