Page 82 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

"What Are You Looking At, You White People?" . 67

Today, unlike when Ella was young, a caretaker's unequivocal "no" is not
the final word. "Today you say 'I don't have it' and they'll go out and get
it somewhere else." This statement reflects sentiments common among
the older generation in Newhallville. Focused on children's lack of re-
spect, or their willfulness, or the belief that they would do anything to
get what they want if it was not given to them, these statements are
loaded with meaning: the world today is in disorder; children are out of
control; kids' values are off-kilter. These intergenerational tensions are
not endemic only to communities such as Newhallville; common com-
plaints can be found in homes with well-to-do residents as well.
Ella had plenty of support for her point of view. The small house she
owned had been burglarized more than once, and items including prized
family quilts stolen. She often remarked that only the junk in her life was
left and that it was a shame that people felt entitled to help themselves to
her possessions. Always a bit house-proud—in her younger days Ella had
been a fanatical housekeeper, changing the curtains in the living room
and kitchen seasonally, for instance—the continuing degradation of her
home (to which she was increasingly confined) ate away at her.
Children are well aware of what their elders and caretakers think.
Tionna knew that her great-grandmother thought she was wasteful and
greedy about money, but she also knew that today she could not even
pretend to buy the world with five pennies as Ella did when she was a
child in rural Alabama. It is true that children today in Newhallville are
likely to have more and to want more and to feel entitled to more than
their parents or grandparents did when they were young. The conflict in
Newhallville—and perhaps in society at large—is that children's lack of
self-control or values are often blamed for this, without a recognition of
the significant pressures at work in children's lives. Advertising and mar-
keting, for instance, target children much more directly and earlier than
has ever been the case previously.
In 1984 the Reagan administration eased Federal Communications
Commission restrictions on several aspects of programming for and ad-
vertising to children on television, paving the way for unprecedented
overlap between products and programs and allowing the lines between
shows and ads to become more blurred. As a result, many companies
have developed cartoon programs that are essentially designed to pro-
mote their toys, and the programs are in essence extended commercials
interrupted by shorter commercials for the same products. Corporate
incursions into children's lives have also taken on forms even more subtle
and complex than Saturday morning cartoons with product tie-ins.