Page 20 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Consumption in Context . 5

any product imaginable, including toiletries, linens, clothes, school sup-
plies, foods, dishes, wallpaper, and furniture. The potential for a nearly
seamless presence of commodities in any contemporary child's activity,
space, or thought is the direct result of changing production and market-
ing practices, coupled with important developments (some would argue
devolutions) of federal policy. These conditions are faced by nearly all
children in the contemporary United States, for whom the commodity
may no longer be an invasion of life but has become the stuff of life itself.
The pervasive presence of the market in children's lives does not elimi-
nate the possibility of confronting or resisting it, but the confrontation
(or accommodation) plays out in specific ways among Newhallville kids
who, because they are neither middle class nor white, are faced with es-
pecially difficult dilemmas.
In Newhallville children are made aware early on of the nuts and bolts
of daily living in a way that is less common among middle-class families.
Rather than being shielded from mysteries like rent, grocery budgets,
and the cost of clothes, kids are often told exactly how much their needs
cost the family and are expected at a young age to use their own money
to buy socks, underwear, and other necessities. With many of their fami-
lies experiencing daily difficulties in providing regular meals, these chil-
dren also learn early on that their own indulgence can mean that someone
close to them must do without. From divvying up the milk to figuring out
where to sleep there is an emphasis on sharing and mutual obligation
that can be onerous and demanding.
The consumer world in which these children operate is one where even
the illusionary choices offered by the market are often out of reach: black
kids who are kicked out of the mall for wearing their hats backward can-
not get lost in the "commodity hall of mirrors" on offer there. Consump-
tion in Newhallville is deeply social, emphasizing sharing, reciprocity,
and mutual obligation. These demands and expectations are not always,
or even mostly, put forth in an atmosphere of joyous communalism or a
Dickensian sort of honorable and jolly poverty: sharing, reciprocity, and
mutual obligation are often extracted from people rather than offered by
them. This is especially so for children, who may find themselves in the
position of being a resource to be shared with others or a burden to be
passed from one person to another. Children are encouraged or required
to participate actively in complex social and kinship networks through
their various consumption activities, whether eating, making purchases,
asking for clothes, school supplies, toys, or treats. In Newhallville, chil-
dren's flights of fancy are continually brought to earth, and theirs is a