Page 81 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

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

somewhat divided household, one where resources such as space and
food seemed to be at times partitioned off, as in the case of Ella's donuts
or Celia and Tionna's room. The family rarely ate together; Ella often
declared that she was tired of cooking after fifty-odd years in the
kitchen. She was overweight besides, and because she had heart trouble
she was constantly battling to lose a few pounds, a task made more dif-
ficult because of a recent double knee replacement. Dinner was some-
times nothing more than a bowl of cereal—not because the family was
too poor or even too disorganized to rustle up something more elabo-
rate, but because none of the three wanted to do the cooking.
Like many of the older generation in Newhallville, Ella had roots in
the rural South, where she grew up. Discipline in these families was
strict, swift, and physical. Mothers were obeyed unconditionally, and
Ella herself had a mother who was deeply imposing. Ella often told the
story of her marriage to her husband, now dead. Though she had had a
boyfriend before, she didn't love him. After the breakup she'd begun to
see the man she would marry, but her mother had long ago decided that
Ella was the child who would be her caretaker in her old age. She was,
in her mother's view, to remain a spinster. On the day that Ella and her
husband-to-be were to secretly wed, Ella told her mother she was going
into town to see a film. She put her best dress on. When her mother saw
her leaving the house in her best dress she ordered her upstairs to change
her clothes. Without protesting, Ella changed her dress and then snuck
off to her wedding. It was a thrilling act of defiance, but Ella was so
afraid of her mother's reaction to the clandestine marriage that she spent
a month continuing to live at home as if nothing had happened.
When Ella talked about "kids today" the theme was likely to be that
they had no respect.
When I was a girl, if my mother said she didn't have it, I didn't get it,
and that was it! Today you say, "I don't have it" and they'll go out
and get it somewhere else. We used to get five pennies together and
we would buy the world with those pennies! "I'll buy a house with
this one ..." That was in the days where gum was one penny a stick.
Kids today ask for a dollar! Tionna asks for two or three dollars.
"What are you going to do with that much money?" I ask her.

The imperatives of consumption have entered and influenced
Newhallville households in a variety of ways. Ella talks about her frus-
trations in what she sees as younger people's demands for money. Her
comments reflect, as well, a sense that kids' desires are out of control.