Talk about your moments of clarity.

Judith Levine found hers in December of 2003, as she and her shopping bags were wedged into a subway car. She began thinking about the toll that her consumerism was taking not only on her momentary comfort and long-term financial ease, but on her conscience as well.

That’s when she decided to go cold turkey.

Excerpts from her book, “Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping,” which was recently reviewed by The Christian Science Monitor, chronicle how Levine and her domestic partner, Paul, spent 2004 living without buying anything but the basics.

What that meant, essentially, was that they bought food and household necessities such as toilet paper. But movies and luxury items were out. The exercise, according to Levine, wasn’t to save money as much as it was to learn what it was like to live outside of the culture of crass consumption.

Levine admits it wasn’t easy. She even slipped up once and went clothes shopping. But the way I see it, more black people should try that kind of experiment -- if only for the sake of our own consciousness-raising.

We’d learn a lot.

According to Target Market News, which specializes in tracking the spending patterns of black people, we spend nearly $800 billion each year. But while we spend much of our money on designer label clothes and the things that convey status, we aren’t richer for it. For example, the typical black household has less than a fourth of the net worth of the typical American household. And while more than 75 percent of white households own their homes, only 48 percent of black households do.

Now much of that shortfall is rooted in racial discrimination -- the kind that makes it tougher for black people to build wealth by disproportionately subjecting us to sub-prime home loans, lower salaries and other injustices. The wealth gap also doesn’t necessarily mean that black people are irresponsible spenders.

What it means is that black people are, for the most part, victims of the same Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club consumer culture as is Levine. But unlike Levine, we have more of a stake in rejecting it.

One of the things that Levine talks of, for example, is forgoing the movies for a year. As black people, one of our chief complaints is either the preponderance of negative images of blacks in film, or the scarcity of blacks in movies altogether. But instead of always protesting to the studios about travesties such as “Soul Plane,” the best way to protest is by giving the movies a break for a year.

Now, I don’t believe that many folks can participate in Levine’s experiment forever. What I do believe, however, is that any kind of experiment that has the effect of consciousness-raising will invariably make us more discerning and questioning consumers.

If we live without, say, a new DVD player or Nikes for a year, maybe that makes it easier to reject buying them from a retail store that disrespects us or won’t hire people who look like us -- no matter how close and convenient that store is. Maybe it means that we learn we can live without certain products -- and use that money to pay off credit card bills.

Maybe it means we rediscover our own resources when it comes to living well. Maybe we scrape together gatherings in the tradition of the old rent parties, when it comes to amusing ourselves. Maybe we go to the park for adult softball, pull out the Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit games, and do other activities that spark closeness and camaraderie, rather than leave a wad of money at the DVD rental store.

Or maybe parents begin to realize that what matters to their children is the quality of time they spend with them, and not the money that they spend on them.

In the end, by doing without for a year, maybe we all wind up being richer. In more ways than we can count.