Poverty, consumerism, and youth

[C. Harald Koch]

From: Anna White <inbalance@newdream.org>
To: "'conversation@newdream.org'" <conversation@newdream.org>
Subject: Poverty, consumerism, and youth--Elizabeth Chin
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 11:48:24 -0400

From: Elizabeth Chin <ejc@oxy.edu>


Matt Carter's questions about the connections between youth violence in
poor urban areas and consumerism pushed all my buttons!  

I am an anthropologist who has been conducting research on the role of
consumption in the lives of poor and working class, mostly African
American, urban kids since the early 1990s.  I'll try to keep this short,
and you can read the book when it comes out next year....

There is no doubt that there are those horrible cases where someone shoots
someone else for their sneakers, their coat, or what have you.  But like
other cases of egregious youth violence (Littleton, Co. comes to mind)
these events are blown out of all proportion.  The reality is, there is
next to no research on consumption among the poor, and even less on
consumption among poor, minority kids.  Marketers don't do much of it
because, of course, you can't make that much money off people who haven't
got money and even the "drug lords" and their minions are, realistically, a
tiny proportion of the population.  The emerging "ethnically correct" toy
niche has clearly been based on a growing minority middle class.

During my own two years of intensive research in New Haven, Connecticut
(which was at the time one of the nations 10 poorest cities)I saw exactly
two pairs of Air Jordans.  Many people apparently find this so hard to
believe that they ask me if there's something wrong with my sample.  The
stereotypes are very deep seated, and very, very destructive and in New
Haven these ideas have had important implications for social and public
policy (which I won't go into).  In contrast to being out of control and
brand-addicted, what I found among the ten-year-olds that I worked with is
that they are extremely efficient and controlled shoppers and highly
pro-social in their consumption choices.  They'd love to have great
expensive stuff, but they know they can't.  During all my time working with
these kids, for example, all the time I spent with them at home, in stores,
in the mall, I only heard them say "I want that" twice.  They don't whine
or wheedle, and they certainly don't even ask for stuff in stores, much
less have a temper tantrum.  When I would offer to buy them ice cream or a
soda, they often refused, saying "I don't want to spend up all your money,
Miss Chin."

Some of my most compelling data come from a series of shopping trips I did
with 23 kids where I gave them $20 and allowed them to spend it however
they liked. Without going too far into the boring details of my
methodology, let me just say that I did not knowingly influence their
shopping -- either what stores they chose to visit or what they bought and
actively tried to be utterly neutral. Girls spent fully 18 percent of the
total money on gifts for other people, buying shoes for their mothers,
jewelry for sisters, pacifiers for young cousins.  I went to Payless Shoes
so often that the staff knew me!  Nearly half the children bought shoes
with money to spare, and bragged about how little they paid for their shoes
-- in one case $5 for a pair of boots.  They bought socks and underwear and
clearasil and school supplies.  They also bought toys, of course, but not
nearly as often as you might think.

As I have kept in touch with families, these patterns have continued.
Teyvon, who is going to be a senior in high school next year, works every
summer, and routinely contributes a hefty portion of his paycheck to his
family.  He came to visit me in California two summers ago, and paid for
half of his ticket himself.  He arrived with nearly no money in his pocket,
however, because he'd had to use his ready cash to help a cousin get bailed
out.

The sense that poor minority youth are pathological and out of control
consumers willing to kill for brand name merchandise arises, I believe, out
of VERY selective reporting which highlights the very pathologies it
decries and is to a great degree shored up by middle class consumers of
such information who want to justify their own consumption by fantasizing
that poor people "don't know how to spend their money," and other related
ideas.  I'm not arguing that poor urban kids are all little angels, but the
sense of violence and out-of-control-ness that most outsiders see as
permeating the "inner city" is to a large degree not an accurate depiction
of the daily reality lived by most families under such circumstances.  I
mean, how many people out there can really say they'd have no problem
feeding themselves and three teenage kids on $264 of food stamps a month?
The families I knew did this because they had no choice.  I have to admit
that just my husband and I probably spend that much, if not more, on our
monthly grocery bill--and we eat next to no meat and do not purchase
processed or prepared foods.

Kids living in poverty learn how to live without money because they must.
The majority do not do violent, crazy things to get the things they want,
and they DO know the difference between a fantasy of having something nice,
or fancy, and realistic ways to satisfy the need for a pair of sneakers
that fit.  And it would be good to remember that even when a kid manages to
buy an expensive pair of sneakers (or an adult for that matter) for those
living in poverty, that item may be the most expensive thing they own.  40
percent of the families I worked with did not have a car.  Most did not own
a home.  Almost none of the children I knew owned anything costing over
$100, and the overwhelming majority of their possessions cost under $10.
As one young man pointed out, people from the "outside" might not
understand why kids like him care so much about their sneakers.  "How would
a guy with a Porsche like it if I went over to his car and put a dent in
it?  That's how I feel when someone steps on my shoes."  The point here is
not that this kid liked his shoes too much, the point is, he cared a lot
about the nicest, and costliest thing he owned and resented both that other
people might not respect this thing, and also resented that people feel the
right to judge him on top of it saying something like "Of COURSE denting a
Porsche will make the owner mad, but a lousy pair of sneakers????"

And a final thought: the issues around consumption and consumerism are very
different for the marginalized poor who must continually fight to get
access to the consumer sphere, than it is for those middle class people who
are fighting to free themselves from it.  Urban minorities from
economically devastated neighborhoods must deal with racism, classism and
other forms of institutionalized inequality in order to do simple, everyday
things like buy groceries or go shopping for clothes.  Supermarkets will
not serve their neighborhoods, and local markets are very expensive.  Many
malls are designed to be inaccessible to pedestrians, and have gone to
court to prevent public transportation from making stops on their propety.
In malls and other stores, these people are followed around, accused of
shoplifting, and even ejected at rates much higher than for their middle
class and white counterparts.  We certainly need a lot more concrete,
objective research on these issues than currently exists.

Elizabeth Chin
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA  90041-3314
(323) 259-2757
(323) 341-4969 (fax)