Page 94 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

"What Are You Looking At, You White People?" . 79

tions taking place between children were multifaceted and ranged in
emotional tenor from lighthearted and teasing to crabby to plain mean
and angry. Despite the range and complexity of all that went on in the
lunchroom, I never saw kids get out of hand in regard to trading food,
giving it away, or receiving it as a gift. Their desires, so openly ex-
pressed, nevertheless remained contained and controlled overall.

Going Downtown
A couple of weeks before Christmas I took Tionna and Natalia shop-
ping. Though the event was engineered by me—I provided the money
and opportunity to make the trip—the girls ran the show. A partial ac-
count of Tionna and Natalia's trip provides a view of how highly com-
plex an afternoon downtown was for these children. By the time they
were ten years old, Tionna and Natalia, like many of their peers, were
allowed to go downtown by themselves, and did so regularly.

The second we walked out of Tionna's house, she pulled out a tube of lipstick
that belonged to Natalia. They both stopped to put the lipstick on, looking at
their faces in the sideview mirrors of parked cars and taking quite a bit of time
getting it on just right. None of their caretakers wanted them wearing makeup.
As we walked along Prospect Street toward downtown they began making up
a song to the tune of "Jingle Bells" that goes like this: "Mario, Mario, raped
Barbie all day long / Batman tried to save the day but Luigi got her anyway!"
(Luigi and Mario are Nintendo video-game characters.) Then they made up a
sort of rap to sing as we walked, a call-and-response chant they traded off
singing, "Hey hey, hey hey, I'm walking too fast now I got some cramps, I'm
walking too fast so I got some cramps." This changed and evolved into several
different variations, all of them loud and interspersed with squawks and giggles.
Entering the mall, the girls spotted a boy from their class and chased after
him, calling his name. He was on the escalator going up to the second floor and
they were hot on his heels, but they lost sight of him. I suggested going to the
food court to make a game plan, but I quickly learned that the game plan was
that there was no game plan, except to spot some cute boys and follow them.
Sitting at a table in the second-floor food court, the girls watched closely as
three boys wandered through and sat by the windows overlooking the town
green. "I dare you to go over and talk to them and I ain't comin'," Tionna said to
Natalia. "They ugly!" Natalia shot back. "Well, one is a yellow light," Tionna
answered, appraising them. Tionna explained to me that a "green light" is an
ugly boy, a "yellow light" is a medium-looking one, and a "red light" is cute.
A man standing near us was wearing a baseball jacket with a complex