In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio

“Violence cannot be reduced to its statistical expression.” 

Bourgois repeatedly states that even though East Harlem is rife with violence, looking solely at numbers or statistics doesn’t paint a comprehensive picture of society’s problems.

“The intimate details of the lives of the crack dealers and their families revealed in this book cannot be understood in a historical vacuum

The plight of the author’s subjects shouldn’t be viewed without understanding the history that their problems have been born from.

“[T]he jíbaro has emerged as a symbol of Puerto Rican cultural integrity and self-respect in the face of foreign influence, domination, and diaspora.” 

Bourgois traces the symbolism of the jíbaro, especially the independence and self-respect inherent in the symbol of this subsistence farmer, to the second-generation Puerto Ricans in East Harlem.

“Social scientists in those years almost automatically interpreted national and ethnic diversity to be a negative, prime-moving sociological force.” 

Past scientists always painted diversity in a negative light, while Bourgois sees how apartheid in the U.S. causes people like those in East Harlem to suffer.

“It is precisely this kind of physically concentrated and ethnically segregated poverty that allows violently self-destructive street cultures to engulf public space and vulnerable lives in so many inner-city, marginal, working-class neighborhoods throughout the United States.” 

Through the larger culture’s reluctance to mingle with inner-city culture, the same violence and self-destruction it lambasts is created by marginalization.

“Although no longer as powerful as it once was locally, the old-fashioned Mafia has left a powerful institutional and ideological legacy on East Harlem.” 

Although East Harlem has changed, with Puerto Ricans being the dominate culture, history ensures that the violence of the Mafia that once owned the streets has been kept as an ideology for those like Primo and Ray.

“The tendency to overspend income windfalls conspicuously is universal in an economy that fetishizes material goods and services.” 

Bourgois makes no distinction between the folly of drug dealers in the inner-city spending money recklessly and middle-class America doing the same.

“None of the crack dealers were explicitly conscious of the linkages between their limited options in the legal economy, their addiction to drugs, and their dependence on the crack economy for economic survival and personal dignity.” 

Bourgois paints a debilitating cycle of drug use and the inability to move out of the underground economy. Although some want "upward mobility"(170) and "legit" (114) jobs, they don’t understand the factors for the failure.

“Crack dealers have to have organic ties to the street scene in order to be able to recognize the bona fide addict or user from the undercover imposter.” 

The lives and success of crack dealers rely on an intimate knowledge of street culture and the goings on of everyone, thereby creating a community centered around drugs.

“Inner-city police forces are so demoralized and incompetent that for the most part they do not have to be systematically corrupt—although they often are—in order for street-level drug dealing to flourish in their precincts.” 

Bourgois explains that while police can be "corrupt," working in the problems in inner cities is a large reason for the ineffectiveness of cops who don’t really have support or ways to make things change for the better.

“Obedience to the norms of high-rise, office-corridor culture is in direct contradiction to street culture’s definitions of personal dignity—especially for males who are socialized not to accept public subordination.” 

Bourgois paints a picture of internalized racism in that office culture doesn’t understand street culture and therefore tries to force people to adopt its ways without understanding the cultural implications.

“A straightforward refusal to be exploited in the legal labor market pushed them into the crack economy and into substance abuse.” 

Although some crack dealers want to go legit, their concepts of self-respect and independence cause them to leave legal jobs for the autocracy of crack dealing.

“Their niche in the underground economy shielded them from having to face the fact that they were socially and economically superfluous to mainstream society.” 

Because crack dealers made connections in a community centered around drug dealing, they were unable to see that they were unnecessary to the larger society that they often wanted to be a part of.

“Somehow, he managed to invert the traditional gender roles of who should be gainfully employed in a household, even while retaining the patriarch’s prerogative of imposing family discipline.” 

Bourgois shows the hypocrisy in male culture when Primo demands to be treated as the head of the household due to machismo, yet he also berates his girlfriend for not taking care of him.

“Most important, they spent their time cultivating street identities both inside and outside the physical confines of school.” 

Institutional education isn’t as important to the kids in inner cities as learning how to survive on the streets. This learning takes place both in and out of the traditional learning institution.

“The distinctive feature of the crack epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, was that instead of an ethnic group or social class being demonized for their proclivity for substance abuse, women, the family, and motherhood itself were assaulted.” 

Women tend to have it tougher in inner cities, and this quote highlights how women are often singled out as unfit and even unwomanly when they fall victim to drug using.

“Pregnant crack addicts can be de-essentialized from the monstrous image of the cruel, unfeeling mother, and be reconstructed as self-destructive rebels.” 

Bourgois suggests that pregnant crack addicts are actively bucking societal roles by making themselves into what they want; in other words, thinking for themselves and not allowing a male-centered definition.

“Once again, it is obviously not ‘feminism’ or the ‘empowerment of women’ that is causing mothers to abandon their children or to poison their fetuses.” 

Mainstream society is quick to demonize women as selfish or unwomanly when they make choice for themselves, whereas women should be allowed to decide, even if those choices are "self-destructive" (285).

“It is assumed that fatherlessness destroys a child’s moral fiber, even though the single most overwhelming problem faced by female-headed households is poverty.” 

Mainstream society points to the absence of fathers for the failures of children. Bourgois maintains that in reality, poverty is the greatest factor in the failures of children.

“There is a powerful historico-cultural weight bearing down on sexual inequalities that shapes the specific patterns of paternal neglect and abuse.” 

Many absentee and abusive fathers are caught in a cycle of flawed masculinity that stems from their fathers and grandfathers. They learn abuse and continue the cycle.

“Masculine respect centers on having large families and taking full responsibility for supporting them economically.” 

Masculine respect is so important for the Puerto Rican families in El Barrio, yet none of the men profiled can support their families, causing an internalization of impotence.

“The former modalities of male respect are no longer achievable within the conjugal household or the extended kin-based community.” 

Newer generations of Nuyoricans (second-generation Puerto Ricans in New York) have abandoned old ways of respect, in part because the patriarchal systems are no longer achievable for the poor.

“Confronting patriarchy from a position of powerlessness wreaks havoc on the psyches of children when they are conditioned culturally to respect male authority unconditionally.” 

Attempting to fight the negative effects of abuse in a male-centered culture causes trauma to kids, especially when kids are supposed to love their fathers unconditionally.