Page 99 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

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

Some GI Joes
Vehicles for GI Joes
Arctic Batman
Batman Jetfoil
Green Beret Rafael
Jetfighter
Carlos knows exactly how much his asked-for gifts cost and where
his mother is likely to buy them; none were more than fifteen dollars.
Moreover, because his mother buys him what he has written on the list,
Carlos knows before Christmas what he will be receiving from her. He
continued, later, "I forgot to put X-Men on my Christmas list but I al-
ready gave it to my mother. We tell what we want for Christmas and
then she makes pretend that she tells Santa Claus and at Christmas Eve
she wake up at like two o'clock in the morning and wrap the presents
and puts them under the tree and makes believe she didn't do it." Like
Carlos, Natalia and her brother Darnell knew well before Christmas
what their primary gifts would be: an electronic doll for her and a Super
Nintendo game system for him.
Carlos's sharp awareness of the circumstances and origins of his own
Christmas gifts and Tionna's willingness to accept that Christmas might
not even happen at all for her are not the only aspects of children's expe-
riences of this holiday in Newhallville. Fantasy and longing are also to
be found, and one afternoon in the classroom where Natalia and Tionna
went to school I was sitting with LaQuisha and Sam while waiting for
their reading group to begin. I asked LaQuisha what she wanted for
Christmas. She wrote down her Christmas list, adding prices for each at
my request:
Money 1,000
Dolls 25
Clothes 500
Magic Potty Baby 20
Food
Pictures
Cameras 20
TV
VCR