365 Black

I discovered 365black.com in the small print of a large poster that went up in the local McDonald's the other day. It wasn't clear that the poster was celebrating Black History Month, mainly I suppose because I didn't know it was happening and also because the poster didn't mention it. I got interested only because I thought the poster art was a bit odd and there was no explanation for either that or the poster itself. Hence my visit to 365black.com, which is McDonalds' salute to the black contribution to society and reminding us 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." And doubtless, that's true. McDonald's is well known for advertising its outreach to the communities in many respects. However, I must admit to a little surprise on clicking through the links here. I followed the one to Employment, and found zero images of black people; the company's gallery of press images includes zero images of black people, and even the international restaurants section has zero shots of restaurants in predominantly black countries; I followed another link, to their Corporate Responsibility section, in which I found that they'd been recognized by Black Enterprise Magazine, but also found that the images of their staff contained zero black people. I flicked through several pages which contained images of white and Hispanic people, and did find one image of a child who might have been of mixed race or from light-black parentage. Aside from that, nothing. This experience was off the main 365black site, but it all links together and visitors to the first site, which is promotional, are encouraged to visit the main corporate and customer site. So I think it's all fair game for comment. Only a MEH from me, regardless of their good intent, because it would have taken little to no effort to insert some images of black employees, black customers, black store managers and franchisees, and of course, the many black staff who must be back there in the kitchens and doing the cooking, themselves. Just for a month. They have another chance in October, which is Black History Month in the UK. Let's see how that one works out.