Page 38 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Consumption in Context . 23

It would be naive to claim that these differences did not matter, and,
like any ethnographer, had I been someone else there are pieces of infor-
mation large and small that I might have discovered simply because of
who I was (or who people thought I was). The reverse also holds true:
much of what people said to me or did with me was the result of our
own particular and unique relationship. Still, it is also arrogant to as-
sume that one's own influence is so profound that any conversation, any
social event in which an ethnographer is an active participant observer,
is so profoundly transformed that it just would not have happened that
way in the researcher's absence. If only we were so omnipotent!
Certainly, people's idea of who I was influenced them in their rela-
tionships to me, and vice versa. But none of us were wholly reinvented
for these encounters, and the community I describe in this book is a true
one. I say that this is "a" true version rather than "the" true version and
emphasize that truth, like reality, is not singular. This does not mean
that reality is up for grabs and everything is subjective; there's a middle
ground between some imagined possibility of absolute objectivity and
the equally simplistic idea that if absolute objectivity does not exist it is
all just a matter of personal opinion. That middle ground is the messy
expanse of fact plus meaning, observation plus interpretation, system
plus serendipity.
The Plan of the Book
The pervasive theme of this book is that the consumer sphere, by its very
nature, is a medium for social inequality. In the next chapter I lay the
groundwork for understanding the particular complexities of black con-
sumer engagement in the contemporary United States. The first analyti-
cal section locates the consumer experience of blacks historically, exam-
ining slavery as a long-term influence on black and white consumption.
The second looks at contemporary media depictions of black and minori-
ty youth as out of control and dangerous "combat consumers." Together
these analyses insist that any understanding of black consumption must
be understood in its specific cultural, historical, and political context,
one that engages with centuries-old incidents like slavery, as well as sym-
bolic representations of blacks in the consumer world. For readers wish-
ing to enter the world of Newhallville more immediately, I suggest mov-
ing directly to chapter 3 and returning to the theoretical material later.
Natalia, Tionna, and Asia, ten-year-olds when this research began,
are the three children whose experiences are the linchpin of this work.
Chapter 3 provides description and thumbnail analysis of a variety of