Page 87 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

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

never explained, beyond the problem that her brother was threatening
to eat the cake before it was time—Natalia took matters into her own
hands, removing the cake from her grandparents' home and taking it to
her mother's former apartment. While Natalia's mother was unprepared
to have the party there, she did not object to what Natalia had done or
tell her to go back with the cake to her grandparents' house.
This was the single birthday party I attended during my time in
Newhallville; birthday parties were rarely held for these children. 2 Gifts
were few as well; Cherie, on her tenth birthday, received three gifts: from
her mother, a jumprope and a bingo game (carefully wrapped in brown
paper from a grocery bag), and from her grandmother an inexpensive
plastic toy. Her father, who lives in another town, was supposed to have
taken her to buy school uniforms as a birthday gift but never did. Cherie
did not have a birthday party, either with family or friends, though her
mother made her a chocolate cake from a mix, which Cherie picked out.
Children I knew in Newhallville did not exchange birthday or holi-
day gifts with each other (neither did they exchange cards). While these
children may not have expected birthday parties, this does not mean
they did not wish for them. Toward the end of my fieldwork time I had a
slumber party for Natalia, and on Tionna's birthday I took her and sev-
eral friends to the movies. These parties were not my idea, but the result
of long, repeated pressure from the girls themselves. While the celebra-
tion of a birthday was certainly an important element of these parties,
by far the most important ingredient was the celebration itself, which
had little birthday-related content. The girls did not talk about the birth-
day girl's age, though some did give birthday hits, punching her once for
each year and once more for good luck. As I found was often the case,
the girls asked for very little and demanded even less.

The Cucumber Stand
One hot July afternoon, I found Tionna and her friend Tiffany, who lives two
doors away, acting as proprietors of a cucumber stand. They had a table set
up in front of Tiffany's house and were selling cucumbers that Tiffany had
grown in her backyard. They had piled the cucumbers on paper towels and
taped signs to the edge of the table saying, "Cucumbers, fresh and clean,"
and another stating the price of the large ones as forty cents, small ones a
quarter.
Some time later Tionna came out with a quite large cucumber and they
tried to figure out what the price should be. Tionna suggested sixty cents.