[Honeykiss1974]

Posted on Fri, Oct. 31, 2003

Consumerism habit hurting blacks
MARK E. MCCORMICK: CONSUMERISM HABIT HURTING BLACKS

Perhaps the sweetest gift my mother gave me was her almost daily lessons on how to spend -- or not to spend -- money.

My father always jokes about my mother's frugality by saying she squeezes a nickel so tight that the Indian on one side of the coin ends up riding the buffalo on the other side.

She saves like a Florida Marlins closer.

Whereas most people enjoy shopping, such outings fill her with dread.

I vividly remember her sighing heavily and whispering sharply to herself, "My goodness!" when the grocery-store checker announced our total.

Mother Dear rarely allows herself the luxury of a new dress or a pair of nice earrings or much of anything, really.

While I was growing up, she saved and stretched everything we had in case our old Impala broke down, the water heater had a heart attack or I needed a new coat.

Blacksploitation?

Her money savvy crossed my mind recently, reminding me of the pitfalls of consumerism in the neighborhood where I grew up.

Just about every black neighborhood I've ever lived in -- from Louisville, Ky., to Oklahoma City and even here -- seemed to have the same set of businesses. Among those:

A check-cashing place.

Roughly 4,327 liquor stores.

A pawnshop.

A furniture-rental store.

These businesses reflect our buying habits, and they certainly don't reflect well on us.

Check-cashing windows, which attach fees to their services, cater to people who either can't or won't use banks.

Neighborhoods that can least afford to have any liquor stores, because of high rates of alcohol-related illness there, often have more than their share of them. Many also double as grocery stores, selling marked-up goods in the absence of supermarkets.

Pawnshops and furniture-rental businesses have been known to tattoo consumers with prices far exceeding the items' value. People could probably buy that new watch or washer much more cheaply with a little planning and patience.

These businesses play on some of black folks' deepest insecurities, but that's not the whole story.

Freedom and responsibility intersect where we spend our money, and too often we've acted irresponsibly.

If money is power...

People in my mother's generation -- children raised in the ashes of the Great Depression -- saw money as something to save.

She'd always say, "Just because you have a little money, Mark, that doesn't mean that you have to spend it."

That doesn't seem to be the prevailing view of my generation, however.

We aren't saving, investing or preparing for our long-term financial futures as much as we should be.

I'm not allergic to nice things, but so much of what we buy seems so shortsighted and superficial -- FUBU, Tommy Hilfiger, Sean John, Nike, K-Swiss, jewelry.

Superficial ideas of wealth tend to develop when you don't have much. Perhaps we're grasping for the dignity long denied us by buying things we associate with status.

Award-winning Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom told a Wichita audience a week or so ago that people on their deathbeds don't whisper to loved ones to please roll the big-screen television closer to the bed for one final picture-in-picture experience. Rather, they want their loved ones gathered close, because possessions aren't nearly as important as people.

You'd never know that considering how strung out so many of us are on the drug of consumerism.

But we'll have to kick this habit if we're going to make any progress. We should ask ourselves, "If money is power, why are we giving it away?"

No price tag for stability

It's no coincidence that my thrifty mother maintained an incredibly stable home. Sound money management can help make for a stable home.

The way she fretted over every dime drove me crazy when I was a kid, but now as an adult, it's like she's some kind of Harvard Business School professor. Leaning on her example, I've tried to clean up my act.

Her thesis boils down to this:

What we spend helps to carve our economic landscape. The world is what we want to make of it. We have more power than we realize.

What a gift.