Posted on September 26, 2022

This May Be the Silliest Lawsuit Ever Filed Against McDonald’s

Andrea Widburg, American Thinker, September 24, 2022

One of Michelle Obama’s crusades was to save Black communities from being food deserts by banishing unhealthy food purveyors and replacing them with stores and restaurants that carried quality fresh food. In keeping with this line of thinking, as little as a year ago, fast food providers were being castigated for advertising targeting Blacks. Things sure have changed today. McDonald’s is facing a $10 billion lawsuit for failing to advertise on Black-owned media channels. In the racially charged world of the left, the “fun” never stops.

We all remember how Michelle Obama insisted that many health problems in Black communities were attributable to their inability to obtain healthy food. That costly initiative failed, but it did raise awareness about the fact that too many Blacks were eating unhealthy diets.

This began the next phase of placing blame for obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, among other health concerns for American Blacks. By 2021, the charge was that there was a “fast food equity” failure because fast food companies were targeting their advertising to Blacks, thereby wrongly encouraging them to eat unhealthy foods:

Mounting research has found a strong link between rates of childhood obesity and increases in advertising for less nutritious foods, such as fast food.

[snip]

Taco Bell, Domino’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s, McDonald’s, and KFC were among the top Black-targeted brands.

Specifically, Black teens saw 1.9–2.5 times as many ads for these same restaurants compared with white teens.

Black preschoolers and Black children viewed an average of three ads per day, or approximately 1,000 fast-food ads on an annual basis in 2019. Black teens saw slightly fewer at 986.9 ads during the same period.

Black youth, on the whole, saw 755 more ads than their white counterparts in 2019, recording a 60% increase from figures in 2012.

Calling this disparity “deplorable,” Fatima Cody Stanford, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Section on Obesity Communications, said this was one of the many barriers to improve health in the Black community.

The message was clear: It’s very evil for fast food restaurants to advertise their product to minorities, especially young minorities.

However, this year, there’s a new message: It’s racist for McDonald’s not to advertise its product on Black media outlets catering to Black audiences.

A federal court this week ruled that McDonald’s will have to face a $10 billion lawsuit alleging that it discriminates against black-owned media channels by refusing to advertise on them.

Media tycoon Byron Allen’s company Allen Media Group will bring the suit against the fast-food retailer, with U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin clearing the way for Allen to attempt to prove his claims in court.

The company “takes billions from African American consumers and gives almost nothing back,” Allen said in a press release following Olguin’s decision.

“The biggest trade deficit in America is the trade deficit between White corporate America and Black America, and McDonald’s is guilty of perpetuating this disparity,” he argued.

Advertise to Blacks and you’re trying to kill them; fail to advertise to Blacks and you’re discriminating against them economically. I wonder where leftists see all of this going. Not anywhere good, that’s for sure.