Thick: And Other Essays

In 2018, there was a series of social media clips of White people calling the police on Black people for just existing. In addition to the aforementioned Starbucks incident, there was Alison Ettel, who pretended to call the police on a young Black girl selling cold water on the sidewalk; Jennifer Schulte, who called the police on people holding a BBQ in Oakland; a White woman who called the police on a young Black boy in Ohio for cutting the grass too close to her yard; a White woman who called the police on a Black man listening to a Bikram yoga CD in his car; and a White person who called the police on a Black family in North Carolina for using a community pool in their neighborhood. They note that a common theme in these complaints is that Black people were buying something. This highlights how Black people are perceived as buying wrong. This is rooted in the belief that Black people are poor and wasteful, and their “wrong” consumption is why they are poor. There is a crisis of Black consumption in White spaces.

McMillan Cottom draws a parallel between questions about what a woman was wearing when she was raped to the discourse around Black people who are racially profiled while shopping. Both are an attempt to shift the critique from structural injustices to “bodies we collectively do not value” (160) to personal responsibility. The question becomes why poor people are spending money on useless status symbols. McMillan Cottom uses her own family’s finances as an entry point to a larger discussion about consumption. She reflects that rural Black generational wealth came when you “lose a leg, a part of your spine, die right, and maybe you can lease-to-own a modular home” (162). It is easy to dismiss people for buying things they can’t afford, but McMillan Cottom shows the tangible benefits that come from proximity to status symbols. Presentability and respectability is coded by race: A White hippie can cut his hair and get a job in senior management, while Black Panthers remain tied to the perception that they courted revolution. Once again, we see how the elasticity of Whiteness as a category benefits White people. Women and people of color are judged more harshly on their appearances than White men, which means that purchasing status symbols becomes necessary to be treated with respect.