Page 91 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

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

"So this thing isn't very realistic?" I asked. The kids looked at me rather
blankly, wondering, I think, what I was getting at. "I mean, is it really
like being pregnant?" "No!" they both shouted. "Why?" I asked them.
"Because," answered Tionna, as if she were speaking to the village idiot,
"you can unzip it and zip it up again and unzip it and zip it up again and
take the baby out and put it in. You can't open up your stomach and take
the baby out and put it back and take it out and put it back."
The toy the girls were discussing had been the object of some heated
debate in the public arena, as certain toys always are. A sort of pouch
worn on the stomach to simulate the look of pregnancy, it contains baby
dolls that can be activated to make movements and the wearer can feel
the baby moving, as a pregnant woman might. There were fears ex-
pressed that kids would get the wrong idea about what pregnancy really
is—that it is removable like the pouch, or that giving birth is like open-
ing up a velcro flap. It is possible that such misunderstandings might
arise among very young children; Tionna's pointed remarks show she
was, however, in no danger of entertaining such a misunderstanding.
While she found the toy interesting, and might even have admitted to
wanting one, she had no illusions that the strap-on pouch is anything
like a real pregnancy.
Throughout the school day these kids, like most children, constantly
discuss clothes, toys, and other products. These discussions are not al-
ways friendly or nice, and making cutting remarks about other kids' de-
sires, appearance, or possessions seems to be a staple of school life just
about everywhere. The Shelton school, like a growing number of schools
across the nation, instituted the use of uniforms in an effort to minimize
the kind of social jockeying that can emerge around the issue of clothes.
Children came to school in white tops and blue bottoms, girls having a
choice of jumpers, skirts, or pants.
Throughout the day, as children interacted with each other, sponta-
neous discussion about what products and programs they liked and
why, what is cool, what is "corny," filled the classroom. These discus-
sions are more than materialism, but an especially intense form of social
interaction, and often a proving ground. In so doing, children express to
each other something of who they are both separately and together.
They give each other consumer information, as did Tionna in telling
Cherie about taking back the ice-cream maker. They also sometimes
supply each other with coveted items—for a price—as Stephen did with
the gimp. These interactions reached peak intensity at lunchtime, when
children at Shelton school had the greatest freedom of their school day.