Viewing the Creation and Reproduction of Racial Stratification through Consumption: Life Histories of the Black Middle-Class in America

This research documents the racial stratification that occurs in the marketplace of America as consumer culture attains dominance in the mid-twentieth century. The history of consumer culture in the West can best be characterized as a social formation that shifts commodity consumption from a peripheral activity in social life to the quintessential activity of social life. The insights generated herein are intended to highlight the critical role played by consumption practices, and consumer culture more broadly, in the creation and maintenance of the Black middle-class. Any broad-reaching investigation of black middle class family life must place consumption practices and consumer culture at its center. Unfortunately, such a perspective has been either largely absent or marginalized in scholarship found in the humanities as well as the social sciences. Traditionally, scholars in the US study Black life largely by looking at labor and income inequality in isolation or in tandem with critical social institutions like family, school, and church. This traditional approach is very limiting insofar as it ignores or marginalizes consumption’s centrality to identity formation as well as its role in the reproduction of culture. Fortunately, contemporary scholarship has begun to include consumption as part of the analysis of the black experience. Unfortunately, consumption still lurks at the margins.