In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio by Philippe Bourgois

Ethnographic research is an avant-garde form of infiltration in a society set to purpose to understand its cultural paradigms and customs, in a concerted effort to challenge preconceived, ethnocentric notions about that social enclave. Furthermore, ethnography is a conducive study towards comprehending what is “other” and demolishing the barriers that create the “us versus them” dichotomy. Throughout In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, Philippe Bourgois presents an extensive and detailed ethnographic report—spanning over half a decade on the cusp of the 1980s and 1990s—of East Harlem’s Puerto Rican second-generation immigrant life experience. Bourgois, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. His fieldwork was extensively conducted in Central America, primarily concentrating on issues of ethnicity and social unrest. Given his background, it is clear that he is most adept at discussing the profoundness of the impact of intersectional issues such as gender, class, and ethnicity among Puerto Rican second-generation Americans in East Harlem in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Throughout the book, Bourgois constructs a neutral, matter-of-fact landscape that features a vicious cycle between systemic cultural and political oppression; street culture customs and norms that lead to substance abuse and violence; and the macro intergenerational shifts that the people in the book are unable to abridge. Furthermore, this cycle, coupled with economic disasters and poverty, becomes inescapable for the protagonists who are stripped of an opportunity towards upward social mobility.

Within this framework, Bourgois adds a human dimension to the Puerto Ricans—or Nuyoricans, as second-generation Puerto Ricans are called in El Barrio—living and entrapped in this cycle, who are often judged on the basis of outside preconceived stereotypes, ignoring the fact that their stories are just as worthy of being told as anyone else’s. The ethnographic research is conducted both through the author’s personal observations as an inhabitant of East Harlem, and through recorded interviews with some of the crack-cocaine dealers and other Nuyoricans regarding their personal experience. Among these interviews, recurring characters such as Primo, Cesar, Candy, Ray, and Luis all tell different stories about their experience in El Barrio at the turn of the 1980’s decade. Although these stories sometimes diverge, sometimes overlap and merge in a larger narrative, personal experiences are crucial, niche details that render In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio an intimate, human confrontation between cultures. Primo, Cesar, Candy, Ray, and Luis’ stories operate as a part of a larger system of forces, and can be examined through analyses of social hierarchies, value and exchange, and language, performance, and its symbolism.

One of the many dichotomies that characterize the structure of Bourgois’ ethnographic work is the contraposition of structural dilemmas—such as larger political ideologies and socio-economic constrictions that create the landscape of poverty in El Barrio—with the individuals’ personal agency to act or not within this framework. Moreover, Bourgois analyzes his conversations and observations with East Harlem’s residents by trying to understand whether they are victim of systematic, top-down oppression or whether they are agents of their own socio-economic demise. Bourgois examines this tension between lack and presence of agency among the residents of East Harlem because through his fieldwork he establishes long-lasting friendships with the individuals he interviews and therefore naturally questions whether he is able to suspend judgement. One of the main points of contention for Bourgois is analyzing the ecology of East Harlem: despite its ever-changing racial occupancy that reflected the larger low-skill worker immigration waves since the turn of the 1900s, it was never able to be characterized other than stricken with poverty, crime, and violence. In every turn of the book, Bourgois is inevitably attracted to larger systemic explanations of individuals as pawns and victims of larger systemic injustices, favoring this over the explanation of personal agency of individuals. His fieldwork and background demonstrates that there is a combination of larger structural patterns despite race that affects the ecology of El Barrio, such as for instance, the failure of welfare institutions that perpetrate the exclusion of residents of East Harlem from upwards social mobility.

Human Diversity and Social Hierarchies

The landscape that frames the ethnographic research in In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, is an ethnic enclave particular to East Harlem that seems completely separate from the larger truths that are inherently American. Two such truths, as analyzed in William Foote Whyte’s Street Corner Society are that America is firstly the land of social mobility, and secondly the land of the self-made man. In America it is easy to spot the characteristics that allow for opportunities at social mobility: level of education, class, and race are determinants for who will advance, why, and how. However, for ethnic enclaves such as the Puerto Rican in El Barrio, and the Italian immigrant families in the pre-war and post-war period, it is not as simple. In fact, they both have in common an internalization of the systemic socio-economic oppression and humiliation that they face outside of their neighborhood, developing coping mechanisms that both end in a development and rooting of an alternative street culture society. The alternative street culture society allows for the boys and men of second-generation Italian and subsequently Puerto Rican Americans to regain their patriarchal place and machoism, which were lost to the humiliation suffered in mainstream society. The constant tension between trying to climb the social ladder in mainstream society versus trying to climb the ranks of street culture society, resounds in Bourgois’ analysis of El Barrio. For instance, a point of diversion between Whyte’s ethnographic piece on Italian second-generation Americans and Bourgois’ Nuyoricans, is that while these two social climbs cannot be reconciled (one cannot be both prominent in mainstream and street culture), Whyte’s pre and post-war subjects were more concentrated on trying to climb the mainstream social hierarchy by forfeiting street corner hierarchy. On the other hand, Bourgois’ Nuyoricans accept the disillusion of the outside humiliation and prefer street culture society because they are both at the top of their hierarchies—regaining thus their masculinity—and because they developed over time a system of tricking welfare into biweekly payments that they add to their profits from crack-cocaine dealing.

These social hierarchies that develop among Italian immigrants, are parallel to those that develop among Puerto Ricans in El Barrio. Whyte describes the fact that in every social hierarchy an individual occupies a certain status and is expected to fill a certain role accordingly. Status is thus defined as a person’s relative position in a social structure or system, while role is the expected behavior from the individual occupying that certain status. A particular aspect of street culture, noticeable in In Search of Respect as well as in Street Culture Society, is that status and role are predetermined: this type of hierarchical social organization is regular and programmed, individuals organically conform to their pre-established, scripted parts. For instance, Junior, the third-generation Puerto-Rican American son of Candy, in early interviews with Bourgois aspired to become a police officer to investigate “real crimes”, yet by the time the ethnographer returned to El Barrio in 1994 and 2003, Junior had graduated from being a lookout for the crack-dealing organization to dealing hand-to-hand with crack addicts and clients of sorts. This type of “graduation” is not surprising; it is just another of El Barrio’s boys “falling into place”, as Bourgois records many times throughout the research.

Moreover, these type of social hierarchies, since in street-culture they have economic undertones as well that make the individuals part of the hierarchy dependent on it for economic wealth, they have an individual usually occupying a status that Whyte identifies as “master status”. In Bourgois’ ethnography, the master status is occupied by Ray in one social hierarchy, and by Bourgois’ himself in another. In fact, in the drug-dealing scene, Ray on top of the hierarchy because he owns the selling spots and most of the crack-cocaine that is dealt. His accumulation of wealth—shown through his flashy clothes, jewelry, young girlfriends, and especially cars—positions him at the top of the hierarchy. Yet, Bourgois finds himself surprisingly at the top of another hierarchy: one that intersects street culture with mainstream culture. As a white man, he is perceived to be wealthier, more educated, and with more means that the Puerto Ricans in El Barrio which places him at the top of the social hierarchy by individuals that are not part of the ecology of El Barrio—mostly white cops that patrol the neighborhood. Furthermore, the process of compartmentalization that Whyte observes among Italians is also true of Puerto Rican descendants in East Harlem’s street culture. Their anonymity in a big city such as New York allows them to shift and occupy a much richer range of status positions: that is, whatever happens in Puerto Rican-dominated neighborhoods, remains in that social enclave, anonymous to anyone below 96th street.

This process, however, is a double edged sword, as Bourgois recounts in his ethnography. Ray, the kingpin of the drug dealing scene in El Barrio has accumulated tremendous amounts of pecuniary wealth, yet his inability to convert this into cultural capital is astonishing. Cultural capital is comprised by the cultural assets a person needs to move upwards in society and it is clear that Ray lacks them completely, when he is humiliated that Bourgois’ uncovers his illiteracy, or lack of information on the matter of how to ask for a city identification, or his inability to maintain successful legal businesses. The ability to convert wealth in cultural capital is inherited by education, one’s neighborhood customs, and by living in America per se and assimilating its set of cultural norms. Yet, counter-culture or subculture pockets such as El Barrio, prove a challenge to the notion that American culture is monolithic and homogeneous, when the reality is multiethnic.

However, while the street-culture hierarchy is the most prominent one that affects everyone in the ethnography because of its socio-economic spillovers, it is not the only one. Yet the other hierarchies that penetrate El Barrio will be presented further on.

Value and Exchange

According to Karl Marx, in his piece entitled “Estranged Labor”, the modern capitalistic, industrial economy has started a process of objectifying the worker into a commodity, who loses his own human creativity, reverting to a state of animalistic pleasures as a distraction from his alienated work. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio’s ethnographic interpretation by Bourgois aligns the second-generation Puerto Rican experience to their past as jíbaro workers in sugar cane plantations in Puerto Rico, in the 1950s and 1960s. The interpretation of the displacement of second-generation Puerto Ricans workers from the minimum-wage to the underground economy is characterized by a Marxist reading of the alienation of labor. Immigration of low-skilled labor from Puerto Rico, aligns with the Marxist understanding of thermodynamics. In the process of converting their skills learned on the sugar cane plantation—in the hopes of achieving a better wage in the American low-skill sector—first generation Puerto Ricans found themselves working illegally, in sweatshops, or off-the-books. The translation of their honest, back-breaking work in factories and agrarian work in Puerto Rico, was lost with their immigration in the United States. Partially because of the lack of cultural capital that would have allowed them upward mobility, and partially because of macroeconomic transformations that were occurring in the American labor market, they found themselves displaced. Therefore, the first instances of labor alienation that Bourgois is interested in is the first-generation Puerto Ricans, parents to Candy, Primo, Cesar, and the like, who worked illegally, yet were never associated with the underground economy of drug-dealing like their progeny. Coming to America with nothing to sell but their labor and energy, workers became a commodity for off-the-books cheap labor, earning a wage which allowed them just to reproduce themselves to come to work the next day. In this, they were the first to be noticed by Bourgois to have fallen victim to the systemic exploitation of immigrant cheap-labor in America.

The second generations, such as the likes of Primo, Cesar, Candy, etc. were thus trapped in a below-minimum-wage life, growing up on welfare payments and food stamps, in rent-controlled housing in El Barrio. Their opportunities for social mobility were systemically taken away from them. Trapped in this cycle, the first instinct, one Primo’s mother recounts to Bourgois as having tried to impart on Primo and his sisters, was to find a job, whether legal or illegal, that would keep him away from the underground economy. His trials proved ineffective—they were scammed out of thousands of dollars to join a program to learnt engineering skills to enter above-minimum-wage jobs—and eventually Primo, as is the archetypal story for many other young Puerto Rican males, became disillusioned, to the point of developing and boasting his lethargy and status as a leech to the welfare system and to his numerous girlfriends. The boasting of his sexual prowess, of his lethargy, and of his cons against the welfare system were a response to the changing economy he found himself displaced from. Primo’s generation found itself trapped between the shrinking availability of factory jobs and the growing availability of service jobs. This translated into people like Cesar, who tried and failed to enter the service economy. His clothes were never as they were supposed to be (even those they were perceived adequate by him); his boss’ reaction to his accent created the notion in him that she was being racist towards him; and eventually the fact that he was working under a woman was the last straw that made him quit. Although this is only Cesar’s story, this is the archetypal path for young men in El Barrio who are predetermined for the underground economy.

As Marx conceives it, labor is alienated from the worker because it does not belong to the laborer and because the product is not the realization of oneself. For Primo and Cesar, they were so humiliated by their experience as laborers in the mainstream, “downtown” economy that they folded back into their own space. The official interpretation Bourgois provides of their understanding of their own experience is that they went to the underground crack-dealing economy because through the mainstream economy they had lost their masculine pride and dealing gave them the incentive to shape personhood on the street and gain street recognition. What is interesting about this interpretation is that Bourgois is astounded when he inquires further and in no way do Primo and Cesar (as well as the others), address nor put the blame the larger systemic marginalization they are victims of. They do not believe that the system is to blame for their own faults, and instead their resistance to mainstream society is to blame for their self-destruction.

Language, Performance, and Symbolism

The aforementioned economic issues have gender and social performativity implications for the residents of El Barrio. This is extremely clear as Philippe’s and Primo and Cesar’ perspectives become opposed in regards to gender and especially the treatment of women versus men in street culture societies, such they participate in. Initially, the assumption is that the violence that permeates El Barrio is a confrontational one, in the distance and only audible through distant gunfire shots. Yet, violence permeates the social relations between men and women, regardless of social relationship, and the script of what is acceptable in El Barrio would be completely unacceptable in mainstream society. In fact, one of the first points of contention in Bourgois’ ethnographic research is how to reconcile his own morals and perspective with the people he is interviewing without being judgmental and misconstruing the narrative. Furthermore, the author questions himself on the politics of presentation. On the one hand, he does not want to perpetrate negative stereotypes of Puerto Rican and Latinos, as those tend to deepen the chasm between them and mainstream society even more, creating even worse negative stereotypes. On the other hand, it is impossible to sanitize the violent stories out of the research project, as they are essentially part of the 360-degree narrative he is trying to provide of El Barrio, and sanitizing them out would not be true to the task.

Therefore, Bourgois commences with a reflection on social customs and traditional gender roles that are transplanted from Puerto Rico into New York, and notices the friction between trying to reconcile the traditional Latino patriarchal familial structure, with the debilitating unemployment that takes away credibility and respect from the men in the household. This friction leads to violence not only within the household, but trickles down in every man-woman interaction and assessment of situation. In words, as well as in actions, violence permeates the consideration men have for women.

Firstly, the language used by Primo, Cesar, and Luis (mostly) is one that would be considered offensive and misogynist by outside canons. The assumptions that Judith Butler uncovers in Gender Trouble about gender being the cultural construction of the biological sex differences between men and women, echo in Bourgois’ research findings. For instance, towards the mid and end section of the ethnography, Candy shoots her husband Felix in the stomach after two decades of beatings suffered by him, and becomes integrated in the underground drug-dealing economy as one of the managers of the other drug dealers. Her fast rise in the street-culture hierarchy, coupled with her boasting of her sexual prowess (typical of men in this economy), and her leaving her one-year old daughter Lillian at home supervised by her pre-pubescent brother, give her a bad reputation in the eyes of Primo and Cesar. Here is a woman who is succeeding at economic and social independence by the street culture standards, and instead of respect, she is denigrated as having lost her “motherly instinct” because she would leave her baby at home instead of taking care of her. The words used by Primo and Cesar to call her out are “bitch”, “crazy ho”, etc.

However, this is not an isolated incident. In a process that Butler and others have identified as Speech Act, the performative interaction mediated by pre-established and expected norms about identity, the labels men give women are at the discretion of their own opinion. That is, a woman can be a bitch for having a jealous “ataque” like Candy had when she shot Felix. If a man were to have a jealous rage, it would be justified by something the woman did to deserve it, while if a woman has an ataque, she is jealous because she is a bitch, or she is a bitch because she is jealous. In any case, a woman is confined to inhabit the space that men construct for her, and is punished for being woman. In terms of speech act, individuals do not fully control their performative actions; in El Barrio, women are subjected, from birth, to become part of a system they did not create for themselves. This begins generally with their rite of passage, which marks the moment in which Puerto Rican men in El Barrio see a woman become a “hole” (as Cesar says), expendable, from a little girl—someone’s child, sister, or daughter. The rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood marks a shift in consideration of women in the eyes of men, as men are the ones performing this rite of passage on an unwilling woman.

In terms of physical violence, while women in El Barrio might or might not have been acquainted with familial beatings or abuse, they are forced to be acquainted with it in their passage from girl to woman. Philippe Bourgois seems torn in his ethnography about how to represent the simple and crude fact that to become a woman, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen year olds are gang-raped by older twenty and thirty-something men. The institution of gang-raping is emboldened both by the inability of the young girl to escape her fate, and because the community tends to blame the girl for giving herself away so easily and “letting it happen to herself”. In one instance, Primo recalls to Bourgois participating in a gang rape with others such as Luis and Ray, and Cesar explaining to Bourgois their own sick interpretation of the rape as “training” the girl because she “liked it” and “wanted it”. In another instance, Candy’s daughter, Jackie is abducted for three days and gang-raped by a boyfriend and his friends together with another girl. Following the attack, Candy confronts the mother of the girl who was raped with her daughter rather than the attackers themselves.

The liminal stage that Victor Turner in Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage, explains is a period of transition without any real status, in which a person is not classifiable until they aggregate to the final state. In El Barrio, girls are gang-raped or run away with their boyfriends in pre-pubescent ages and become pregnant. For women, the liminal stage is the state between their first sexual experience and motherhood. During the liminal stage, as Cesar recalls, they are just “holes”, expendable and invisible to the society. In fact, motherhood represents for many the establishment of oneself in the society, the final state of aggregation.

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Bibliography

Bourgois, Philippe. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Rutledge, 1990.

Engels, Friedrich. Marx, Karl. “Estranged Labor”. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Edited by Robert C. Tucker, 70-79. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.

Turner, Victor W. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage”. Readers in Comparative Religion, no. 4. (1999): 234-243.

Whyte, William Foote. Street Corner Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943.