Black Consumerism

SS zine was always supposed to be a response or alternative to mainstream black hip-hop culture and black consumerism, but I'm not sure I ever made that as clear as I wanted to.  It was only in going on tour with the People of Color Zine Project and having the opportunity every day for two weeks to verbalize the thoughts behind the making of my zine that I came to realize how central anti-consumerist, anticapitalist and DIY ethics are to the zine, even though I mostly just talked about music.  Of all the issues, #3 Money Is Fake, is probably the one speaks best to my belief that DIY has been and will continue to be a liberating tool for black people.

The article, "The Soul of Black Consumerism," does an excellent job describing the problem, but in the end offers the solution of spirituality to counter materialism (the author is Baha'i).  I do not disagree with him, but I wish to offer another solution:  DIY culture creation.  Instead of mindlessly consuming corporate culture, create your own using whatever resources you have at your disposal right now.

From The Soul of Black Consumerism:

"I believe that the feverish pursuit of material things that we witness among Black folk is a racialized expression of the consumerism afflicting Americans generally. For Black Americans, our economic behavior is a reflection of the collision of internalized materialism and internalized racism. Acquiring material things matters because we associate these things (consciously or not) with the power traditionally possessed by White Americans.

Acquiring them has not only practical value, but psychological value as a counter to our feelings of racial inferiority. We need to acquire more and more in order to quiet that nagging sense that no matter how much we have, we are never quite fully human beings. This is why you will witness even Black folk of means self-destruct either through disastrous financial decisions, or self-medicating their self-doubt (i.e. Whitney Houston).

Given our history this is hardly surprising. That a people who were long considered property should come to believe their salvation lay in amassing it is but one indication of the psychic toll of slavery. As such, the antics of a Jay-Z or Kanye West can be understood as reflecting a psyche still held in captivity to materialist conceptualizations of Black identity. It is art imitating life, or perhaps more accurately, art imitating death, the death of human nobility due to the insanity of White supremacy."

-Phillipe Copeland