Mass consumption promised immigrants a visible transformation into citizens.

Evidence

The Ewens posit: “The promise of the ‘melting pot’ … equated the utilization of consumer products not only with citizenship, but with a demonstrable and necessary transformation of the self.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1634

Categorization

• XREF: Links the consumer-citizenship equation — the backdrop against which Black Baptist women’s anti-consumerist respectability sermons were pitched — to broader work on consumption and identity. — connects to: Mass culture creates the very needs it then claims to satisfy — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 113; Colonized people gain status precisely by renouncing their own culture for the colonizer’s; Ordinary errands became conscious acts of reclaiming American citizenship — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 499 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• American capitalism offered European immigrants whiteness as a path to belonging. #expands (0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 220
• Ottoman reforms manufactured a new citizen-subject perceiving through state eyes. #corroborates (0.76)
• Colonized people gain status precisely by renouncing their own culture for the colonizer’s #expands (0.75)
• Mass culture creates the very needs it then claims to satisfy #qualifies (0.74) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 113
• Ordinary errands became conscious acts of reclaiming American citizenship #exemplifies (0.73) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 499