Page 44 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

The Shadow of Whiteness . 29

of thieves": what they buy, wear, use, and covet is seen as rooted in or
leading to social pathology (1994a,b). While examining the specific
forms of consumption that exist among Newhallville children, this work
also takes to task the ideology that portrays consumption among those
without resources as fundamentally deviant, if not pathological, and
views children as future adults rather than as bearers and creators of cul-
ture as much as they are also participants in it. In documenting the ways
that Newhallville children take part in consumption or are excluded from
it, this research lays some of the groundwork necessary for understanding
the dynamics of inequality in the consumer sphere. Such inequality arises
from and is perpetuated by the political economic processes of which con-
sumption is inevitably a part. The understanding that consumption is a
fundamentally social process, and one that operates in and through global
systems of provisioning and exchange, is critical to the emergent scholar-
ship on consumption, and social geography has had a decided influence
on the development of this understanding (Jackson and Thrift 1995;
Miller 1995a; Sherry 1995). Furthermore, the consumer lives of urban
black kids are undeniably different from this Euro-American norm in
large part, I argue, because of historical factors that have shaped not only
black lives but American lives for centuries.
As James Carrier and Josiah Heyman (1997) note, social inequality
has rarely been taken up as an important factor in understanding the
ways in which consumption operates in people's lives. Theirs is a stun-
ning point, if you stop to think about it, since social inequality—most
obviously economic inequality—would seem to be a critical element in
shaping consumption horizons. An examination of slavery illustrates the
fundamental influence of social inequality in shaping consumption. This
focus also helps to situate the specific experience of Newhallville children
in the broader African American consumer experience. Taking a long view
of consumption in the lives of black Americans illustrates the familiarity
of supposedly new dilemmas, while also pointing to structural reasons for
consumption orientations that differ markedly from the "mainstream."
My argument is not, I must stress, that slavery has been incorporated like
some sort of cultural DNA into present-day black culture. For one thing,
slavery has had an impact not just upon those who were enslaved but all
Americans, one way or another.
Throughout my attention is directed toward both material questions
and symbolic elements, particularly popular culture and media portrayals.
The second part of this chapter examines some of these contemporary
portrayals in detail. Ideas about the "mainstream" have always existed