Page 139 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

124 . Anthropologist on Shopping Sprees

walkie-talkies were a toy that required another person in order to be en-
joyed, and a toy that required him to speak in order to play with them.
The walkie-talkies seemed to suit his particular dilemma perfectly: they
were a vehicle that allowed him to talk to people but at the same time did
not require him to be too close in order to make contact. Davy told me
when I asked that he planned to use the walkie-talkies with his little
brother, and this detail is also important. Davy had chosen a toy that by
its very nature needed to be shared, not just because he wanted to con-
nect and communicate with others; although he was the only child in his
family to be taken on a shopping trip, he wanted to come home with
something his other siblings could enjoy with him. Davy's choice of toy
and playmates can be seen to fit in with his already established caretaking
role in relationship to his younger siblings. His projected choice of play-
mates was not inevitable, and he did not really have to choose his little
brother—he could have planned to use the walkie-talkies with his friends
Ronnie and Kareem, for instance.
Even the Wolverine figure that he yearned for gives more insight on
the nature of Davy's social longings than it helps to understand his mate-
rial desires, if these things must be considered separately at all. Having
his own Wolverine figure would have provided him a way to enter into
social relationships with other boys in the neighborhood, as he would
have been able to come to the play sessions with a toy of his own and
thus level the playing field a bit. The struggle Davy experienced while
standing in the Toys-R-Us aisle with only twenty dollars to spend was
not focused on a selfish desire to have more stuff. These objects were
avenues through which he could attempt to forge more complex, more
meaningful, and stronger social relationships with his siblings and with
his friends. His struggle was less about whether to buy walkie-talkies or
Wolverine than it was deciding which relationships he wanted to foster
and strengthen: those with friends, or those with family.
There exists a gap between efforts like Davy's to create and foster re-
lationships with friends and family through consumption, and the ability
to successfully accomplish these efforts. For poor and working-class
kids, the constraints on access to the material realms of the consumer
world are many. Though Davy's choice of merchandise on his shopping
trip reveals a multilayered complexity regarding his careful attention to
siblings, sharing, caretaking, and building friendships, one wonders what
Davy did when the expensive batteries inevitably lost their power. How
would he replace the five-dollar batteries? Where could he buy them?
Unlike the Wolverine figure he put aside, the walkie-talkies required on-