Page 39 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

24 . Consumption in Context

daily events in their lives—trading lunches at school, a sidewalk cucum-
ber stand, running around the mall, playing with Barbie on a stoop—and
illustrates the vitality and richness of these girls' engagements with the
consumer sphere. These are placed in the context of family, neighbor-
hood, and city settings, all of which pose certain restraints and possibili-
ties. Parents, for instance, constantly remind children of how much their
maintenance and care cost in material and psychic terms; in response,
these children consistently limit or curtail their requests for food, cloth-
ing, or other items. Narratives about the dangers and problems of being
black consumers in a racist (white) world are also an integral part of chil-
dren's consumption experience; these narratives tell the story of these
dangers and problems, while also crafting responses to them. These par-
ticular ethnographic details illuminate the inadequacy of current models
of consumption, and of children's consumption in particular, for describ-
ing and accounting for poor and working-class children of color. Such
models are implicitly (and often explicitly) based on the white middle
class and thus make patterns such as those seen in Newhallville appear
to be distortions or pathologies. The title of the chapter, "What Are You
Looking At, You White People?" is a question that Tionna shouted out
one day to a passing car, and a question which, in the face of popular
stereotypes and biased models, guides the inquiry presented here.
Moving from children's individual lives, chapter 4 traces the history
of New Haven and Newhallville, focusing on how changing vistas in
employment and production have shaped New Haven and Newhallville
as consumer environments for Newhallville kids. Insights from social
geography play a critical role in this analysis, which views the space of
the city and neighborhood as the result of social and political processes.
The role of urban renewal, for instance, was pivotal in creating a city
that is segregated racially, economically, educationally, and in employ-
ment. This history gives distinct shape to children's consumer experi-
ences in New Haven, where territories are bounded in multiple ways.
An analysis of dilemmas faced by Newhallville girls as they shop in local
stores is contrasted with their experiences in a downtown shop selling
inexpensive jewelry. In Bob's, a local grocery, neither the girls' poverty
nor their blackness is an issue; in Claire's, a downtown accessory shop,
these define the prickly nature of encounters there.
Children in the study were taken on shopping trips in order to get a
detailed, concentrated look at how they shop, what they buy, and where
they spend money. The analysis of the shopping trips presented in chapter
5 ethnographically plumbs children's purchases, connecting those items