Page 53 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

38 . The Shadow of Whiteness
into present-day portrayals of African Americans who, like the infamous
welfare queen, are too lazy to work but not too lazy to steal, ready to
play dumb but amazingly ingenious at executing a scam.
Despite having severely limited means and opportunity for entering
the market independently, either as workers or consumers, many slaves
were able to earn money by selling produce, crafts, and their own labor.
This was, literally, a sort of Devil's bargain, since frequently slaves were
only allowed to do such work on Sundays. White slaveholders could thus
conveniently view their slaves' very willingness to work for money on
Sundays as a mark of their debased natures, although Solomon Northrup
felt slaveholder approbation worth the monetary reward: "However in-
jurious to the morals, it is certainly a blessing to the physical condition of
the slave, to be permitted to break the Sabbath. Otherwise, there would
be no way to provide himself with any utensils" (1968,148).
In this situation lies the foundation for some themes regarding black
consumption that continue into the present day. Slaveholders and slaves
quite obviously had different ideas about what slaves "needed," in terms
of food, utensils, and income. Slaveholders reserved for themselves the
right to be mortified by the willingness of slaves to work on the Sabbath
and thus endanger their heavenly bliss, turning a blind eye to the desires
of slaves to have cabin furniture, water pails, pocketknives, or new
shoes. In deciding that these people did not need pails, beds, or more
than two sets of clothes a year, slaveholders allowed for themselves the
right to interpret slaves' needs and desires for these and other "luxuries"
as a kind of depravity. Many slaves thought differently, and the impor-
tance of purchased possessions has a prominent place in many persons'
recollections, as demonstrations of both independence and personhood.
Slave needs were defined from the outset as being different from those of
slaveholders and, depending on the mood, could be additionally defined
as immoral or illegal, a theme that finds resonance in current welfare de-
bates and policies. Food stamps, for example, help to delineate a differ-
ing standard for "need" and cannot be used to purchase a number of
food items, including brown eggs and cooked carrots; of course, essential
nonfood items like dish soap, toilet paper, sponges, or sanitary napkins
cannot be bought with food stamps at all. 5
The work situation of enslaved people created a dynamic of moral
judgment similar to the contemporary myths portraying the consump-
tion desires of the poor and materially deprived as being rooted in de-
pravity. Such moral opprobrium did not stop slaveholders from profiting
from their slaves' extra work; they often required bondsmen to pay for