Page 34 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Consumption in Context . 19

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during this time that I met Tionna, Natalia, and Asia, around whom
much of this ethnography centers, and over the course of the summer I
spent hours and hours following them through a variety of activities: ex-
ploring downtown, walking through the neighborhood, going to local
stores, just hanging out in their houses or on their stoops. In the fall I
spent time in the classroom, sometimes helping children with their read-
ing or math, other times simply observing. I went on field trips, attended
afterschool rehearsals, school fairs, class parties. On one hellish day I
actually served as the substitute teacher. While it didn't help me manage
the chaos at the time, the degree to which the kids refused to accept me
in the authoritative role of classroom teacher was comforting later. If
this group of children is described as a "sample" they do not constitute
a random group; nevertheless, the children and their families were rep-
resentative of that neighborhood, which was both economically diverse
and complex (see appendix A). Households ranged in size from the two
people in Terry's home to the six people in Ricky's and Tarelle's homes.
Households were headed by single mothers (11), mother and father (4),
married grandparents (3), aunts (2), a single grandmother (1), and a
great-grandmother (1). Nine of the families lived in homes they owned;
six families used a Section 8 voucher to pay their rent, but among these
two were renting apartments in homes owned by another resident fami-
ly member. 11 Six of the households had no car of their own. Several of
the grandparents and great-grandparents were retired from jobs as fire-
fighters, cafeteria workers, and janitors. Stephen's parents earned a com-
bined income they estimated at $90,000 a year, and this family was far
and away the most financially well off of those I knew; families on state
and federal aid (fully half of those discussed here) rarely had much extra
money at all. The others worked in jobs as diverse as seamstress, build-
ing maintenance, group home supervisor, home health aide, mechanic.
Life was not necessarily much easier for these working folk than it was
for those on aid: Natalia's grandfather told me that his pension and his
wife's work as a domestic worker provided them and their two resident
grandchildren an income of $18,000 yearly.
As families grew more familiar with me I was able to attend celebra-
tions, accompany mothers on grocery shopping trips, conduct a small
number of inventories of children's rooms, and go on special outings—
shopping trips in Jamaica, Queens, or trips to amusement parks. Children
were included in some of these activities, but not all. Getting a wider
sense of the full consumer engagement of families and households was
important for situating the knowledge and experience of the children I