Page 56 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

The Shadow of Whiteness . 41

One time in particular, while walking home late in the evening, I saw
two or three of them together. I was afraid, but summoned all my reso-
lution, and marched directly on towards them, not turning to the right
hand nor to the left, until I came up to them. They at first did not
notice me, being engaged in conversation. I continued on, head up,
walked past them and happening to brush one of them a little in pass-
ing, they immediately turned off the walk; one of them spoke and said
we ask your pardon sir. (95-96)

Had Venture Smith been dark-skinned, such a masquerade would never
have worked, but the quality and fashion of his clothes is also key in
marking him as at least potentially white, and as actually white in some
people's perception. The three men of the guard whom he passes on the
sidewalk give him the wall—an act of politeness in itself, since it puts the
walker farther away from possible splashes from passing carriages. This
act acknowledges the patrol's deference not only to Venture Smith's
whiteness, which they have evidently accepted, but what they assume to
be his higher social status: they ask his pardon for being in his way.
The direct buying and selling of human beings was, of course, the
most hideous form of consumption. And yet, aside from the manifest
horrors of the slave-auction house, and of the scenes so often recounted
today of husbands and wives being sold apart from each other, or chil-
dren being torn from their mothers, a particularly awful kind of buying
and selling sometimes took place: people buying themselves or family
members in order to gain freedom from ownership by whites. We know
little today about the interpersonal dynamics that emerged from such
purchases, particularly purchases of children by parents, or of parents
by children; of husband purchasing wife, or wife purchasing her hus-
band. In his account of his life under slavery, Rev. G. W. Offley describes
such transactions taking place among his immediate family:

My mother was born a slave in the State of Virginia, and sold in the
State of Maryland, and there remained until married, and became the
mother of three children. She was willed free at the death of her mas-
ter; her three children were also willed free at the age of twenty-five.
But my youngest brother was put on a second will, which was de-
stroyed by the widow and the children, and he was subjected to
bondage for life. My father was a free man, and therefore bought him
as a slave for life and gave him his freedom at the age of twenty years.
He also bought my sister for a term of years, say until she was twenty-
five years old. He gave her her freedom at the age of sixteen years. He