Race and Retail - (Rutgers Studies on Race and Ethnicity) by Mia Bay (Paperback)

About the Book

Race and Retail documents the extent to which retail establishments, both past and present, have often catered to specific ethnic and racial groups. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the original essays collected here explore selling and buying practices of nonwhite populations around the world and the barriers that shape these habits, such as racial discrimination, food deserts, and gentrification.

Book Synopsis

Race has long shaped shopping experiences for many Americans. Retail exchanges and establishments have made headlines as flashpoints for conflict not only between blacks and whites, but also between whites, Mexicans, Asian Americans, and a wide variety of other ethnic groups, who have at times found themselves unwelcome at white-owned businesses. Race and Retail documents the extent to which retail establishments, both past and present, have often catered to specific ethnic and racial groups. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the original essays collected here explore selling and buying practices of nonwhite populations around the world and the barriers that shape these habits, such as racial discrimination, food deserts, and gentrification. The contributors highlight more contemporary issues by raising questions about how race informs business owners' ideas about consumer demand, resulting in substandard quality and higher prices for minorities than in predominantly white neighborhoods. In a wide-ranging exploration of the subject, they also address revitalization and gentrification in South Korean and Latino neighborhoods in California, Arab and Turkish coffeehouses and hookah lounges in South Paterson, New Jersey, and tourist capoeira consumption in Brazil. Race and Retail illuminates the complex play of forces at work in racialized retail markets and the everyday impact of those forces on minority consumers. The essays demonstrate how past practice remains in force in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Review Quotes

"A fine resource for scholars and students alike, one that moves the field of consumer culture studies forward by enriching what we know and suggesting how much research - and much advocacy - still lie ahead."-- "The Journal of American History"

"Definitively establishes the importance of retail as a site where racial and ethnic identities are formed, negotiated, policed, or contested ... Race and Retail is an excellent collection, one whose rich content amply rewards careful reading."-- "Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"

"Providing effective analyses of how ethnicity affects people's experience as consumers as well as citizens, this cohesive collection will have a broad audience ... Highly recommended."-- "CHOICE"

"This is the most important book on race and consumerism in many years."--Kathy M. Newman "author of Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935-1947"

About the Author

MIA BAY is a professor of history and co-director of the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University. She is the author of The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People 1830-1925.
ANN FABIAN is a distinguished professor of history and co-director of the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University. She is the author of The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America's Unburied Dead.