Page 79 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

64 . "What Are You Looking At, You White People?"

When Tionna shouted out her question to the blue-haired white lady
in the passing car, part of it was aimed at me as well. Knowing full well
what the prevailing stereotypes are in New Haven about young black
kids, Tionna brazenly ups the ante by becoming homey-er than thou, ex-
aggerating the very character traits that she knows are most feared, dis-
liked, and disparaged in the white world beyond her neighborhood. "I
know what you're thinking," she seemed to say, "and I can be that per-
son, but if you think that's me, you don't know what you're really look-
ing at." The challenge Tionna offered was to see beyond the act, to rec-
ognize her performance for what it was, an imitation of stereotypes held
by others. The catch is, Tionna could be reasonably sure that only those
familiar with her neighborhood as a community would be able to see
through the put-on: people passing by in cars going thirty-five miles an
hour are hardly likely to get the joke. When speaking about Barbie to an
imagined audience, Natalia and Asia confronted the culture gap by ad-
justing their language so it could be understood by outsiders. In either
case, these girls showed a stark and fundamental recognition of a social
and geographic world inexorably separated from their own.

Consumption in Everyday Life
Consumption, like culture, poses a basic conundrum: while undertaken
by individuals, what it is is larger than can be contained within any one
person. And yet, while existing beyond any single person, it is only to be
found within the actions, behaviors, and beliefs of individuals. Under-
standing the consumer lives of the children I knew in Newhallville re-
quires moving beyond the borders of the neighborhood or even the city;
simultaneously it requires an almost obsessive attention to the tiny de-
tails of children's daily lives, from a discussion over eating a donut to
shopping in the downtown mall.
Subsequent chapters in this book focus on specific issues such as chil-
dren's shopping trips and their relationships with ethnically correct
dolls. The remainder of this chapter, however, provides a more free-
ranging survey of the wider variety of children's consumer lives, from
the intimate settings of their homes, to school, neighborhood stores, and
downtown. What follows is a series of scenes or vignettes that illustrate
important aspects of the ways in which children in Newhallville engage
with consumption as a social process. Most are taken from the lives of
Tionna, Asia, and Natalia, but the material is not limited to these three
children: their classmates, siblings, and friends appear regularly. While
arranged more or less temporally, this series of images is not meant to be