Page 51 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

36 . The Shadow of Whiteness

often augmented by fine furnishings, china, and silver; slaveholders
tended to use their money to buy more land, more stock, and more
slaves rather than investing in lavish homes or interior decoration (Fox-
Genovese 1988, 106-7). Most of the slaveholding South relied heavily
on locally or home-produced products, and consumption was not de-
fined by activities such as shopping, as it is today. Material and techno-
logical niceties were few.
That said, even taking into account the sometimes close quarters be-
tween slaveholder and slave, or the frequently smallish gap between the
big house and slave quarters, slaves were provided with few material
comforts. The account of Solomon Northrup provides a particularly
ironic description of these material possessions. Northrup was a free
Northerner who was kidnapped into slavery for twelve years. He had
been an independent farmer and businessman in the years before his ab-
duction and he was used to having his own home, along with the con-
venience of furniture, dishes, pails and the like. He deeply resented their
absence, as this sharply ironic passage shows:
When a slave, purchased, or kidnapped in the North, is transported
to a cabin on Bayou Boeuf, he is furnished with neither knife, nor
fork, nor dish, nor kettle, nor any other thing in the shape of crock-
ery, or furniture of any nature or description. He is furnished with a
blanket before he reaches there, and wrapping that around him, he
can either stand up, or lie down upon the ground, or on a board, if his
master has no use for it. He is at liberty to find a gourd in which to
keep his meal, or he can eat his corn from the cob, just as he pleases.
To ask the master for a knife, or skillet, or any small convenience of
the kind, would be answered with a kick, or laughed at as a joke.
(Northrup 1968, 148)
Northrup's carefully chosen words are unequivocal in their portrayal of
the sphere of consumption as one quite removed from democracy. In
fact, this passage is rather remarkable for the way it manages to portray
the condition of slavery through a description of the difficulties of basic
provisioning faced by slaves. One can almost imagine that Northrup's
diatribe here is directed at the self-congratulatory slaveholder describing
the luxuries provided bondsmen under his or her "care." The whole
passage continually speaks of freedoms and choices that are in fact dep-
rivations and oppressions. With a blanket, but no bed, Northrup says
the slave "can either stand up, or lie down upon the ground, or on a
board," as if any of these options were appealing. In the next sentence,