People made many appeals to the right of consumption. Americans have the right to buy! It is a tenuous right indicative of our consumer society. Being a consumer, or not, should not condition your civil rights. That kind of thinking is how we end up with cruel policies that police where homeless people can sit in public or where poor people can stand without violating an ordinance. The idea is also ridiculous for how it ignores the history of black people buying wrong. Like many ideas about race, these notions are contradictory and yet live side by side in our popular imagination.
