Page 167 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

152 . Ethnically Correct Dolls

I knew possessed any of the ethnically correct toys available at the time.
The market for ethnically correct toys has been explicitly built upon the
buying power of the black middle class; marketing and publicity materi-
als often note the hefty amount of money spent by black consumers on
toys—$745.6 million in 1992-93 according to Ebony magazine press
materials. While this is sound business practice (marketing toys to the
poor is unlikely to generate much revenue), it forces manufacturers of
ethnically correct toys into an uncomfortable position, arguing on the
one hand that these toys are good because they serve an important social
function, and on the other that it is not their responsibility to make these
products available to economically disadvantaged kids. If ethnically cor-
rect toys are primarily about self-esteem, it stands to reason that minority
children who are also poor are more likely than their better-off peers to
face challenges in creating positive feelings about themselves. It is around
the question of poor minority children that the conflicts between social
agendas and business realities manifest themselves most dramatically.
For kids in Newhallville, access to the retailers offering these toys
was often difficult, if they had it at all. There were no local neighbor-
hood stores where playthings could be purchased, and the downtown
mall housed only Kay-Bee, a toy store specializing in manufacturing
overruns and discontinued items. Toys-R-Us was located in the next
town and all but inaccessible by public transport. In an area where 40
percent of households do not have cars, Toys-R-Us was, for most fami-
lies, visited only on special occasions. Remember that until he was eleven
years old Davy had never visited Toys-R-Us and did not even know
what that store was. Similarly Tionna told me her favorite store was the
supermarket; Carlos's favorite store was Ames (a discount chain) but, he
told me, "they went bankrupt." Though these children often were well
informed about the toys they did not have from watching television,
they had, on the whole, few illusions about being able to possess them.
In a subtle and unexamined way, then, even minority toymakers have
been committed to enhancing the play lives of minority children only as
long as these children could buy their products—which involved not
only having the money to make the purchase, but having the ability to
get to the store where the items could be bought. The breadth of this so-
cial agenda is circumscribed by the limits of business and, in a sense, mi-
nority entrepreneurs while seeking to multiculturalize the market have
been attempting to do so while being fully assimilated into corporate
culture. As Yla Eason put it when she spoke at the 1993 Ebony event,
"The marketing strategy is forming alliances and creating ethnic streams