Page 49 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

34 . The Shadow of Whiteness

black skin it is branded" (as quoted in Leiman 1993, 13). Racism anc
capitalism have been demonstrated to be twinned, and this second state
ment by Marx adds a complicating factor to the democratic promise o:
the market, underscoring the ephemeral and illusionary qualities of th(
possibility it offers (Genovese 1965; Leiman 1993). The laborer wit!
some money to spend in Marx's first quote may be able to "extinguish
his specificity as a worker" when entering into the exchange system, bu
those with branded black skin—to use Marx's words—cannot. O:
course, Marx was writing during the time when slavery was still in prac
tice, and part of the meaning of this second comment is that labor can
not possibly hope to free itself while some remain enslaved. What strikes
me, however, is the continuing relevance of these two statements, botl:
singly and together.
In the section that follows, I trace some of the ways in which th(
legacy of slavery has shaped African American consumption in order tc
illustrate concretely the profoundly political nature of consumptior
and its forceful presence in shaping people's pasts and futures. Th(
whites who attempted to demonstrate racial privilege through a series
of social, legal, and economic apparatuses were profoundly changed—
3
even formed—in the crucible of slavery and, later, segregation. We an
not talking here about a relatively benign world full of "choices" when
the manufacturing process itself is the most insidious factor. Neithei
are we speaking of a world in which the opposing teams are consumer;
(relatively undifferentiated) and manufacturers. Rather, the history o:
black consumption in America has been one of engineered deprivation
struggle, and violence, as well as innovation, creativity, and, in some
cases, transcendence.

Slavery and Consumption
The two hundred years during which the vast majority of blacks in the
United States were considered to be commodities rather than persons
endowed with civil and legal rights are perhaps the most dramatic exam-
ple illustrating why the black relationship to consumption in this countr)
is, to put it mildly, unique. As the Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaic
points out in her biting harangue aimed at colonialism in the form oi
white, middle-class tourists:
Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists?
Well, it's because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital,
like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar. . . . [T]he memory of this is so