“The classist vilification of the Black Friday shopper”
“This was in a Walmart with a majority black staff and clientele, and it was kind of covered in a way that the LA riots were. There were helicopter shots of throngs of black bodies; there was a lot of the same kind of discourse, the fear of a black underclass coming for Beverly Hills, coming for your stuff in your gated communities.
There were similarities in the way the coverage was racialized, footage of people ransacking goods while there’s a whole host of social problems and they’re living in a veritable police state. It looked identical if you turned the sound off; it was very striking.
So from there, I started to look at the history of the crowd and the discourse around crowds. Really from the rise of historical modernity, crowds have been associated with danger, disease, race. Today, for example, we see how Trump has mobilized mobs…
After the 9/11 attacks, [George W.] Bush told people to go out and shop, that it’s your civic duty. So blaming Black Friday shoppers for shopping sends a contradictory message. I think it’s also class shaming.”
It’s true — there is a kind of voyeurism, a kind of sick superior glee in watching the images of hordes of people swarming big box stores, images of chaos and destruction in their wake, delivered to you on your full-price television in your warm, comfortable home while you eat copious leftovers.
It’s the new Thanksgiving Day Parade — bring your children to gawk and laugh at the undignified shopping experiences of poorer people.
