Page 88 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

"What Are You Looking At, You White People?" . 73

Tiffany wondered if it should be seventy-five. Then, with authority Tionna an-
nounced the price should be fifty cents because then they could split it easier
and wouldn't have to wait for some change. Tiffany told me the woman next
door had given them a dollar to get their business started. Tiffany's grand-
mother came by and bought a large cucumber, putting fifty, rather than forty,
cents into the pot. The kids would occasionally count the money and divide it
into two equal piles, since they were planning to split the money equally. They
ended up with each having about a dollar seventy-five.
Later that afternoon, my own next-door neighbor's child—about five years
old—set up a lemonade stand on the walkway to her home. The neighbor-
hood where I lived at the time (occupying a spare bedroom in my godparents'
home) is populated by Yale professors, doctors, lawyers—well-off professional
people, or those, like these neighbors, who are graduate students on their way
to professional careers. "I think she does it just so she can meet people," her
mother said. The girl had been provided with a large bowl full of change and
was charging a sliding scale for the cups of lemonade. A child psychiatrist
who lived down the street stopped at the stand and then with no apparent
sense of irony began grilling the five-year-old proprietor about her "return on
investment" and "reinvestment of capital."

My neighbor's observation about her child's motivation for setting up
her lemonade stand—that she wanted "to meet people"—stands in con-
trast to the psychiatrist's interest in educating the girl in business finance.
Tionna and Tiffany likewise had highly social reasons for setting up their
cucumber stand. For one, it provided them a legitimate reason to stay
outside and talk to people with whom they otherwise would have no rea-
son to communicate. For another, it made them objects of attention—
and usually praise. Passersby, even if they did not buy, made comments
such as "Isn't that nice!" or "Those are good-looking cucumbers." It of-
fered, of course, the opportunity to make some money, but it is interest-
ing to note that the girls' concern with sharing whatever money they gen-
erated seemed to supersede their pursuit of high prices, and they decided
to price the largest cucumber at fifty cents rather than seventy-five be-
cause it was an amount easily divided between the two. For them, the
ease of sharing money equally was more important than maximizing
their income.
The cucumber stand is a variation on the classic summertime commer-
cial enterprise for American children, the lemonade stand. Like allow-
ances, these stereotypical childhood engagements with the commercial