IN SEARCH OF RESPECT
Selling Crack in El Barrio
Second Edition
PHILIPPE BOURGOIS
University of California, San Francisco
3
CRACKHOUSE MANAGEMENT:
ADDICTION, DISCIPLINE, AND
!
. DIGNITY
Hell, yeah, I felt good when I owned the Game Room. In those days everybody be looking for me; everybody needed me. When I drove up, people be opening the door for me, and offering to wash my car. Even kids too little to understand anything about drugs looked up to me.
Felix
The logistics of selling crack are not dramatically different from those of any other risky private sector retail enterprise. Selling high-volume, inexpensive products is an inherently boring undertaking that requires honest, disciplined workers in order to be successful. Such businesses are inherently rife with traditional management versus labor confrontations, as well as internal jealousies or rivalries within employee hierarchies. It is only the omnipresent danger, the high profit margin, and the desperate tone of addiction that prevent crack dealing from becoming overwhelmingly routine and tedious. The details of how the Game Room was run during the years I lived next to it provide a good example of these dynamics.
Living with Crack
Ray did not found the Game Room. The person who actually established the z yc-square-fcot video game arcade as a crackhouse was a childhood friend of his named Felix, who was also Primo's first cousin. Felix did not run a tight operation; he reveled too much in street-corner glory and consequently did not insulate himself from the police by hiring a manager, or at least some intermediary worker-assistants, to make the actual
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In Search of Respect
The Game Room crackhouse. Photo by Philippe Bourgois.
hand-to-hand sales. Instead, for the first year after opening shop he ran every detail of his crackhouse operation with the exception of the "cooking" of the crack - its processing - which he delegated to his wife, Candy, in traditional patriarchal style. The bulk of Felix's energy at the Game Room was devoted to cultivating sexual liaisons with addicted women - especially teenage girls.
During this early phase of the crack epidemic in late 1985, Primo was one of Felix's steadiest customers. He had lost his job as a messengerclerk at a typesetting shop, had broken up with his wife, and had abandoned all pretense of supporting their two-and-a-half-year-old son. Instead, he had returned home to his fifty-year-old mother's nineteenthfloor housing project apartment, where he shared a cramped bedroom with one of his three older sisters. While his mother sewed all day in the living room for an off-the-books garment subcontractor to supplement her welfare payments, Primo dedicated himself full time to hustling and robbing for his crack habit.
In later years, in front of his friends, workers, and even his customers, Primo enjoyed reminiscing about the desperate year he spent as a crack addict:
Crackhouse Management
Primo: I was in my own habit world. I didn't give a fuck about anything.
Let me tell you about one time when I was on a mission [crack binge}. I wanted a blast [catching the eyes of his crack-addicted lookout Caesar}.
Caksar: [spinning around from his position in the doorway} Yeah, yeah. Your only worry was making a cloud in your stem [glass crack pipe}.
Primo: One time I was with my homeboy and his girl. We saw this Mexican sleeping on the floor in the lobby of my aunt's building. He was just probably drunk. He looked like he had a job, maybe, because a homeless would not have had a gold ring.
As soon as I saw him, I just went, "Ti; times la bora" [You got the time}? And as he got the time [making the motion of looking at a wristwatch], I grabbed him by the back of the neck, and put my 007 [knife}! in his back [grabbing me in a choke hold from behind}, I put it in his back - right here [releasing me to point to his lower spine}. And I was jigging him hard! [grinning, and catching his girlfriend Maria's eye}.
Caesar: Them Mexican people get drunk like real crazy man.
Everybody be ripping them off; they easy prey 'cause they illegal most of them.
Primo: I said: "No te mueua cabron 0 te voy a picar como tin pemil" [Don't move motherfucker or I'll stick you like a roasted pig}. [we all chuckle.}
Yeah, yeah, like a piece of pernil - a pork shoulder ... like how you stab a pork shoulder when you want to put all the flavoring in the holes.
Caesar: Everybody take Mexicans like a joke. It's a little crime wave. Mexicans be fucked-up with crime in New York. That's like the new thing to do.
Primo: The Mexican panicked. He looked like he wanted to escape, but the more he tried to escape, the more I wouldn't let go and the more I was jigging him.
And I had a big 007. I wasn't playing, either, I was serious. I would have jigged him. Ifhe would have made an attempt, I would have went like CHKKK [grimacing painfully while twisting his wrist forward in a slow-motion stab}.
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In searcn OJ «espea
And I'd regret it later, but I was looking at that gold ring he had. [chuckle].
I put the Mexican to the floor, poking him hard, and my
homeboy's girl started searching him.
I said, "Take everything, man! Search for everything!"
She found his chain. I said, "Yo, take that asshole's fucking
ring too.
He was going: [imitating a high-pitched whine] "Oh no! Por
favor, por favor!"
It must have been like a thing he treasured, maybe. He was
saying "Take whatever else, but not the ring." I said, "Fuck that shit, you don't have enough money homeboy. [gruffly barking his words like a foreman at a construction site] Take the fucking ring
off his finger!"
After she took the ring we broke out. We sold the ring and then
we cut out on her to go get a blast.
Caesar: Yeah, yeah. You was smoking heavenly.
Primo: We left her in the park, she didn't even get a cent. Caesar: Smokin' lovely.
Primo: She helped for nothing - got jerked.
Caesar: [frazzled by his images of smoking crack] The only reason I get high is because I love it. The first blast is the best'est one. It's like a Ruffle potato chip. You just can't have one. You need more, 'cause it's good.
It's a brain thing. It's thick. Once you take that first blast, then
the whole night is going to be a total adventure into madness. It's just a thing, you have to have more.
Primo: Chill the fuck out Caesar! Why you always be interrupting
me when I'm talking with Felipe?
At the height of his own crack-smoking days, Primo's life took a dramatic turn when Felix's out-of-control machismo provided him with a brand-new, well-paid job opportunity.
Felix was hanging around with some woman in a hotel in New Jersey. It was on the second floor, and Candy - his wife - had found out about it and came looking for him.
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Cracebouse Management
And so Felix jumped off from the second floor landing and he fucked up his foot, so he couldn't work.?
The next day Felix asked me if I would help him out. From that day on, I just stood working here.
Once Felix's ankle recovered, he maintained Primo as manager of daily sales in order to devote even more time to hanging out on the street. He came frequently to the Game Room to display his "sexual conquests" - usually crack-addicted young women. Felix's antics allowed Primo to keep his job, which provided the stability and sense of self-worth that finally allowed him to kick his crack habit after twelve months of steady smoking.
Primo's dream of going straight almost came to a crashing end when Felix's wife, Candy, who was six months pregnant at the time, shot Felix in the stomach to punish him for sleeping with her sister. As soon as Felix recovered from his hospital stay, he was sent "upstate" to prison to serve an unrelated two- to four-year prison sentence for weapons possession. Candy immediately sold the rights to the Game Room for $3,000 to Ray, who himself had just completed a four-year sentence upstate for assault with a deadly weapon, following his $14,000 rooftop shoot-out above the heroin den he was holding up.
Restructuring Management at the Game Room
After a tense week or two of negotiations, which temporarily drove Primo back to binging on crack, Ray maintained Primo as manager of the Game Room on an eight-hour shift from 4:00 p.m. to midnight. The price of vials was dropped to five dollars to make them more competitive with two new teenage outfits operating in the stairwells of the housing project opposite the Game Room where vials were selling for three dollars and even two dollars on discount nights. Primo was to be paid on a piece-rate basis, receiving one dollar for every five dollars he sold. Primo had been held up at shotgun point several weeks earlier and obtained the right from Ray to hire any lookouts or assistants he wanted, so long as he paid them out of his own piece-rate wages. Ray imposed stricter limits, however, on the behavior of noncustomer visitors in order to reduce crowding and noise levels on the stoop in front of the crackhouse.
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In Search of Respect
Ray proved to be a brilliant labor relations manager. Over the years, I watched him systematically extract higher and higher profit margins from his problematic workers. Having grown up in EI Barrio as a gang leader in the early 1970s, he knew how to discipline his workforce firmly without overstepping culturally defined rules of mutual respect. He knew exactly where to set violent limits, and when to express friendship and flexible understanding without ever revealing vulnerability.
Ray was particularly skillful in his manipulation of kinship networks to ensure the loyalty of his often addicted and violent workers. The majority of his employees were blood-related kin, or were affiliated through marriage, or had been incorporated through a fictive kinship arrangement. He asked Primo, for example, to be the godfather of one of . his sons, thereby establishing a com padre relationship. The institution of compadrazgo is a powerful tradition in Puerto Rican culture that sanctifies solidarity and reciprocal obligations between men. Ironically, several generations earlier, back in the mountains of rural Puerto Rico, local landlords had probably manipulated this same paternalistic godfather institution to coerce the indebted day-labor of Ray and Primo's grandfathers or great-grandfathers. 3 In his more modern context, Ray also benefited from the contemporary street-culture kinship arrangements that oblige women to establish serial households with different men through their life cycles. Hence, his childhood friendship with his employee, Luis, was cemented into a quasi kin-relationship by their having fathered children with the same woman.
In the first few weeks following his takeover of the Game Room, Ray's business acumen - specifically his lowering of prices and his raising of the quality of the product - made business boom. The Game Room easily ourcornpeted the low-quality powder cocaine sold out of a grocery store four doors down as, well as the budget-rate crack hawked by teenage crews in the project stairwells across the street. An immediate crisis for control of the site erupted, however, when a police offensive against drug dealing in public school playgrounds pushed several Dominican-run heroin companies onto the block. All of a sudden our sidewalk was swarmed by half a dozen four-man teams, each with two lookouts, one pitcher, and a runner. After some tense face-offs, Ray pressured the Dominican managers to respect his space and move across the avenue.
Within a few months, Ray had invested his, Game Room profits into
Crackhouse Management
opening two new franchises: one - which was relatively short-lived _ in the second-floor apartment of a condemned building being renovated by New York City funds to become subsidized public housing; and the other, the Social Club on La Farmacia's corner by the Hell Gate POSt office. During this initial period of expansion Primo basked in a distinctly privileged position within Ray's budding network of crackhouses:
I was the first one of the regular crew to start working with this guy [Ray]. I was saving money; I wasn't getting high _ only a few beers occasionally. And I used to hang out with Ray. At that time, he didn't have no cars yet. He use to be on foot. And I use to stay with him, hanging around every night .
Both of us used to go home with a knot [wad of bills] and save a coupla' hundreds. The next day, I used to come down with change - you know, thirty or forty dollars - money in my pocket to spend while I was working.
As a formal, founding member of Ray's growing organization, Primo was eligible for the benefits that are part of a crack dealer's pay _ such as bail money and lawyer's fees, bonus payments during special holidays (Christmas, Easter, and Father's Day), periodic gifts for his son, and an occasional lobster dinner at Orchard Beach, Coney Island, or Far Rockaway. Primo's lookouts, on the other hand, were a step lower in the hierarchy. There is probably no work site in the legal economy where Primo could ever aspire realistically to becoming a manager, or even a privileged employee within his first year of being hired. Toward the end of my residence on the block, I frequently asked Primo to give me retrospective accounts of the half-dozen workers he had hired over the five years I knew him at the Game Room.
Primo: [sitting on a car hood in front of the Game Room} The first one that worked for me was Willie. I used to feed him and give him a coupla' dollars at the end of the day.
After him came Little Pete - I used to give him a hundred and fifty dollars a week. Strictly one fifty - plus beers - things like that. After Little Pete came Benzie because Little Pete got promoted fast by Ray to the Club [on La Farmacia's corner}.
In Search of Respect·
I used to pay Benzie daily. I used to give him thirty-five or forty dollars, sometimes fifty on a good night - which is not a lot - but I was treating Benzie better than the others. So after a while I let Benzie keep half and half. Me and him, we used to split everything.
I hired Caesar permanently because of problems between Benzie and Ray. Before that Caesar was only part time because he was always acting too stupid: He used to get jealous because of Benzie. But I told Caesar, "You can't sell, 'cause you're a crackhead and you fuck up."
There's always a problem paying Caesar. I don't know what to do with that nigga' [waving dismissively '~t Caesar, who was standing in the doorway]. He's been acting stupid. I gotta talk to him.
Philippe: You sound like a fuckin' hard-ass boss, complaining about your workers' attitude problems.
Primo: Nah Felipe. I don't act like no boss. I don't bitch. I have never succeeded with power in here. Even when I had little thirteen-year-old Junior helping me out - you know, Felix's son - he would say "Okay, okay, shut up already" to me when I would tell him to do something.
The only time I have fulL authority is when I'm really pissed off, but I don't really want to boss you around just to boss you around.
I have to keep things from getting too fucked up here because I'm responsible. If anything is missing, I'm gonna hear it from Ray.
All of them [waving disdainfully at Caesar again] used to like to take over the whole show.
[loud gunshots]. Yo! Chill out Felipe. Why you so petro?
So . . . after I put Benzie to work, he used to act like he owned the whole show. It's like he feels power just because he's dealing, so he feels like he could diss [disrespect] all the customers. He used to dish [mispronunciation of diss] some good people, especially all the men.
He dissed them, like ... like they were kids - like shit. And these guys, they do what they do, but they're human beings and they're cool, you know. I used to tell him lots of times to "cool the fuck out." I'd have to tell him "I know this guy; talk to him nicely. Respetalo, bro!" [respect him]. But he wouldn't play by the rules.
CrackhoZlse Management
He was treating people like shit. So I brought Caesar back, but tambiin [also] he thinks he's running the whole show.
Philippe: Isn't Caesar worse than Benzie?
Primo: Bohf [both] are bad. But Caesar is worser because he don't give! a fuck about anybody. I don't even trust him anymore.
Indeed, I vividly remember Benzie chanting triumphantly to oncoming Customers, "That's right, rnah' man! Come on! Keep on killing yourself; bring me that money; smoke yourself to death; make me rich." Of course, Primo ultimately was not much more Courteous to his clients. He sometimes joined his colleagues in ridiculing the walking human carcasses that so many street-level crack addicts become after several months of smoking. In the Game Room, this was often conjugated by an explicitly racist and sexist dynamic:
Caesar: Felipe, you shoulda seen these two dirty moyo motherfuckers who came by here earlier. It was a moreno [African-American]4 and his girl.
Primo: [laughing] She slipped on her ass walking out the door. Caesar: And she rnusra broke that ass, 'cause she tripped and fell face first.
Primo: I saw her limping ...
Caesar: She got damaged, man, because she hit that iron thing that we got there stuck in the cement.
She limped off. She limped away real fucked up. But homeboy didn't give a fuck that his woman fell down; he just walked away. [perhaps noticing my silence, he shook his head righteously] It was wrong, boy.
Primo: [ignoring me and laughing at Caesar's righteousness] No man, he was thirsty!
Caesar: Yeah! Yeah! He was like, "Fuck her. Ah'rn'a' smoke." [inhaling deeply with a blissful grin, and then spinning around to face me] I don't care what you think Felipe, morenos be more fucked up and eviler than Puerto Ricans. Because when she fell I said, "Oh, shit, you all right there?"
But her man, he was like . . . he jumped over her and walked out in front of her.
Curbing Addiction and Channeling Violence
Primo's close friendship with Caesar was a complicated one. Caesar's drinking often unleashed uncontrollable outbursts of aggression and when he binged on crack - which was almost every time he got paid - he ended up borrowing or stealing from everyone around him. Nevertheless, for the last three years of my residence on the block Caesar and Primo were inseparable. Caesar lasted the longest of all the lookouts and other crackhouse assistants whom Primo hired.
Sometimes I thought Primo tolerated Caesar's poor work discipline because he sympathized with Caesar's crack addiction. He seemed to be providing Caesar with the same kind of supportive environment for quitting that he had been afforded by Felix when he was first hired to sell at the Game Room. At other times I suspected that the reason all of Primo's subcontracted employees - Willie, Benzie, Little Pete, and Caesar - were crack addicts was because this enabled Primo to pay them lower wages and to impo_se more dependent working conditions. Often he substituted payments-in-kind (vials of crack) for cash remuneration at the end of the shift. Of course, Primo did not have much choice since most of the people in his world were crack users. On a few occasions, Primo acknowledged his manipulation of the addiction of his workers as well as his own dependence on Ray for steady cash to buy powder cocaine and alcohol for himself.
Primo: It was stupid slow tonight. The shit we're selling is whack. I've only got thirty dollars for me, and I gotta give half to Caesar.
But since it's so slow we just don't give each other money, we just spend it together.
Plus, you see, we had already borrowed motley from Ray from before so we have to pay himback little by little.
As if to illustrate his words, almost without breaking stride, Primo handed a ten-dollar bill to an emaciated coke seller who happened to be standing in our path, and pocketed a half-inch-long vial of white powder. Caesar had walked ahead of us and did not hear Primo whisper to me:
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Primo: Caesar doesn't really keep track of it. I can jerk him. It's not no fifty-fifty thing.
Despite regularly drinking liquor and sniffing cocaine with Caesar, Primo genuinely tried to wean his friend and worker away from his more destructive and uncontrollable crack binging. Over the years, he experimented with half a dozen different schemes to rehabilitate Caesar and convert him into a more disciplined worker.
Caesar was always fucking up. He always wanted me to pay him each night, but then he'd take the money and break Out to smoke. He'd come find me later, begging me for more money.
I'd say, "You stupid? I paid you already. Don't do that shit to me. You crazy, boy? Don't ask me for no money. I gave you your fucking pay."
Then the next day, he wouldn't show up for work or he'd come late. So then I didn't use to pay him daily. I used to pay him at the end of the week when Ray pays me.
Even that didn't work. [pausing to sniff out of a folded dollar bill full of powder cocaine] I was tired of him doing that to me. So one day, when I paid him, I said, "If you go and fuck this up and don't come in tomorrow. I'm not going to keep on working with you no more, because I'm getting tired of you."
Shortly after that is when I hired Benzie, who was still one of my customers at the time.
A year or so earlier, Primo had fired his friend Willie - nicknamed "O.D." because of his overdose-style of binging - for exactly the same reason. According to Primo, O. D.'s addiction was even more unacceptable since he smoked during work hours. Under pressure from his father, Willie joined the army. He was the only person in Ray's network able to enter the military because he was the only one to have a high school degree - which he had obtained on a fluke affirmative action program in a downtown elite private high school that has since declared bankruptcy. Trained as a tank driver, he miraculously escaped the Gulf War in January 1991 when he happened to be on furlough in East Harlem binging on crack. He simply prolonged his binge and went AWOL.
Despite Primo's perennial complaints - compared to an addict like OD or a street culture prima donna like Benzie - Caesar did an excellent job as lookout. He personified the personal logic of violence in the street's overarching culture of terror by intimidating everyone around him with his reputation for unpredictable outbursts of rage. The only person who ever disrespected the Game Room premises while Caesar was on duty was a jealous young man high on angel dust. He was subsequently carried away from the premises with a fractured skull. I cannot forget hearing the nauseating thump of the baseball bat that caught the offending man squarely on the forehead just as the Game Room door behind me shut as I was fleeing the scene. Primo later confided in me that he had to restrain Caesar after three blows to keep him from killing the man while he lay unconscious on the floor. Caesar loved to remind me and anyone else within earshot of the event. It was good public relations for ensuring the security of the premises. 5
Caesar: That nigga' was talking shit for a long time, about how we pussy. How he fuckin' control the block and how: [putting his hands on his hips and waving his head back and forth, imitating a spoiled child's taunts] "I can do whatever I want."
And we were trying to take it calm like until he starts talkin' rhis'n'that, about how he gonna drop "a dime on us [report us to the police}.
That's when I grabbed the bat - I looked at the ax that Primo keeps behind the Pac-Man but then I said, "No; I want something that's going to be short and compact. I onl~ .gotta swing a short distance to clock the shit out of this motherfucker."
[shouting out the Game Room door] You don't control shit, because we rocked your fuckin' ass. Ha! Ha! Ha!
[turning back to me} That was 'right when you ran out the door Felipe. But the bottom line, Felipe, is survival of the fittest - or survival with a helmet, because I had got wild.
Now I gotta try to get Ray to lend me his Lincoln.
Another benefit Caesar derived from his inability to control his underlying rage was a lifelong monthly social security insurance check for being - as he put it - "a certified nut case," which he periodically reconfirmed by occasionally attempting to commit suicide.
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In Ray's judgment, Caesar was too out of control to be trusted, and he was never formally hired into the network. Ray was much more cautious than Primo about whom he hired. Only in exceptional cases did he give breaks to full-blown addicts or excessively violent individuals. Caesar was acutely aware of Ray's rejection of him, but nevertheless continually aspired to f?rmal inclusion in his organization.
Caesar: Ray don't pay me directly, I'm subcontracted by Primo. If I go to jail, I'm Primo's responsibility but Ray will look out for me, 'cause he likes to keep me around too, for security reasons. He wants to slide me into the organization.
Plus I don't got no felony arrests. I got the cleanest [criminal] record out of anybody working for Ray. If I gOt busted, he knows I wouldn't jerk him for the bail money like Benzie did. I'd keep going to court and I wouldn't drop a dime.
Benzie, the lookout who replaced Caesar, was also a crack addict, but unlike Caesar he followed Primo's example and used his position as drug dealer as a trampoline for overcoming his crack addiction by substituting it for a less virulent powder cocaine habit occasionally supplemented by heroin. This allowed for a less hierarchical relationship and Primo promptly promoted him to partner. Particularly interesting in Benzie's case is that he had originally been holding a permanent legal job as a janitor's assistant at an exclusive men's club in midtown Manhattan at the time that Primo offered him the position of lookout. It was only once he fully immersed himself in street culture's underground economy as a powerful figure - a dealer - that he was able to stop using crack. In other words, Benzie started using crack while working legally, and not until he quit his legitimate job to work full time as a crack dealer was he able to kick his crack habit. The responsibilities of his new position as a street seller forced him to straighten out.
Primo: After I fired Caesar I started working by myself again until, somehow, some way, this guy [pointing to Benzie} started giving me hints that he wanted to work, and I liked'ed him. [pausing to sniff again]
So I started asking him, "You wauna work here?" 'Cause I
In Search of Respect
wanted to take it easy. [sniffing from the tip of a key dipped into a ten-dollar glassine packet of heroin and passing it to Benzie}
Benzie: [sniffing] At the time I was working legit with my Pops at the Yacht Club as a maintenance engineer. I used to come over here [to the Game Room] after work.
When Primo hired me that gave me two jobs.
You know at what time I used to get up to get to the Yacht Club? Five o'clock in the morn in' because I used to have to be there at seven - and right on the dot! From seven until three-thirty I be at the Yacht Club. Then at four I had to be at the Game Room [sniffing heroin].
Primo: So I told him, "Thirty dollars a day, six days a week.
'Cause I don't work Sundays."
He said, "Yeah, yeah, that's good." So he hung out.
And after that, time went by. I saw he was cool - that he wasn't smoking so much. I used to take him to the [Social] Club and buy a bottle of Bacardi and feed him food, and we'd be sniffing. [pausing to crush a fresh vial's worth of cocaine in a dollar bill}
So one time, I told him, "Go ahead, serve." Then after a while (sniffing cocaine), I told him, "Whatever we sell, we gonna divide equally each day. That way, you could make some money."
Because I was gettin' paid back in them days. [throwing his head back and sniffing heavily} I used to get like two hundred, two-fifty, three hundred, even four hundred dollars a night for eight hours work. The least I would get is two hundred - two-fifty dollars a night.
Benzie: Yeah, we was making money then, boy! Bohf making
two-something a night.
Primo: We used to clock, man. This shit [pointing to the back of the Pac-Man machine, where the crack vials were stashed} used to
sell like hotcakes. I
I'm a fuckin' idiot man. I should have bought something so that my money would have been still here.
But as soon ~s Benzie started working with me it was all party.
And my money is history. That money just flew, boy. I spent it (spitting the words) on hotels, coke, liquor. It was easy come, easy go. I used to treat for everything with everybody - Benzie, Caesar,
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O.D. - everybody. I just wanted friends. Everyday we was horeling it. Hotels cost money, man.
It's too bad I didn't see you a lot in those days Felipe. We could've really enjoyed you. (grabbing my arm with the instant affection 'that a sudden rush of cocaine can generate in the rollercoaster e6bs and flows of a speedball - heroin-cum-cocaine - high] And we probably would have been more cool if you would've been there. 'Cause you can't get into no trouble. Instead we used to break everything in the room.
I was hanging out so roughly trying to be a, Mr. Big Star. (sniffing and catching Benzie's eye] 'Cause we had cash and we used to enjoy it. (slapping five with Benzie and erupting into loud mutual laughter]
Minimum Wage Crack Dealers
I finally solved the mystery of why most street-level crack dealers remain penniless during their careers, when I realized that their generous bingebehavior is ultimately no different from the more individualistic, and circumscribed, conspicuous consumption that rapidly upwardly mobile persons in the legal economy also usually engage in. The tendency to overspend income windfalls conspicuously is universal in an economy that fetishizes material goods and services. Crack dealers are merely a caricaturally visible version of this otherwise very North American phenomenon of rapidly overconsuming easily earned money. Their limited options for spending money constructively in the legal economy exacerbate their profligacy.
A more complex dimension of the crack dealers' relationship to the mainstream economy is their interaction with the legal labor market. A systematic discussion of this complex, antagonistic relationship is the basis for Chapter 4. I shall explore briefly here, however, how this tension with the legal economy affected day-to-day operations at the Game Room, because the appeal of the crack economy is not limited to a simple dollars-and-cents logic.
Street dealers tend to brag to outsiders and to themselves about how much money they make each night. In fact, their income is almost never as consistently high as they report it to be. Most street sellers, like
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In Search of Respect
Caesar displaying cash and three bundles of crack inside the Game Room. Photo by Susan Meiselas.
Primo, are paid on a piece-rate commission basis. In other words, their take-home pay is a function of how much they sell. When converted into an hourly wage, this is often a relatively paltry sum. According to my calculations, Ray's workers, for example, averaged slightly less than double the legal minimum wage - between seven and eight dollars an hour. There were plenty of exceptional nights, however, when they made up to ten times minimum wage - and these are the nights they remember when they reminisce. They forget all the other shifts when they were unable to work because of police raids, and they certainly do not count the nights they spent in jail as forfeited working hours.
It took me several years to realize how inconsistent and meager crack income can be. This was brought home to me symbolically 'one night as Primo and Caesar were shutting down the Game Room. Caesar unscrewed the fuses in the electrical box to disconnect the video games. Primo had finished stashing the leftover bundles of crack vials inside a hollowed-out live electrical socket and was counting the night's thick wad of receipts. I was struck by how thin the handful of bills were that he separated out and folded neatly into his personal billfold. Primo and
Caesar then eagerly lowered the icon riot gates over the Game Room's windows, and snapped shut the heavy Yale padlocks. They were moving with the smooth, hurried gestures of workers preparing to go home after an honest day's hard labor. Marveling at the universality in the body language of workers rushing at closing time, I felt an urge to compare the wages paid by this alternative economy. I grabbed Primo's wallet out of his back pocket, carefully giving a wide berth to the fatter wad in his front pocket that represented Ray's share of the night's income - and that could cost Primo his life if it were waylaid. Unexpectedly, I pulled out fifteen dollars' worth of food stamps along with two twenty-dollar bills. After an embarrassed giggle, Primo stammered something to the effect that his mother had added him to her monthly food stamp allotment, and now gave him his thirty-dollar share each month to spend on his own.
Primo: I gave, my girl, Maria, half of it. I said, "Here, take it, use it if you need it for whatever." And then the other half I still got it in my wallet for emergencies.
Like that, we always got a couple of dollars here and there, to survive with. Because tonight, straight cash, I only got garbage. Forty dollars! Do you believe that?
At the same time that wages can be relatively low in the crack economy, working conditions are also often inferior to those found in the legal economy. Aside from the obvious dangers of being shot, or of going to prison, the physical work space of most crackhouses is usually unpleasant. The infrastructure of the Game Room, for example, was much worse than that of any legal retail outfits in East Harlem: There was no bathroom, no cunning water, no telephone, no heat in the winter,
. and no air-conditioning in the summer. Primo occasionally complained.
Primo: Everything that you see here [sweeping his arm at the scratched and dented video games, the walls with peeling paint, the floor slippery with litter, the filthy windows pasted over with ripped movie posters] is fucked-up. It sucks, man [pointing at the red forty-watt bare bulb hanging from an exposed fixture in the middle of the room and exuding a sickly twilight].
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Indeed, the only furnishings besides the video games were a few grimy milk crates and bent aluminum stools. Worse yet, a smell of urine and vomit usually permeated the locale. For a few months Primo was able to maintain a rudimentary sound system, but it was eventually beaten to a pulp during one of Caesar's drunken rages. The same thing happened to a scratchy black-and-white television set that Primo had bought from a customer for the price of a five-dollar vial. Of course, the deficient infrastructure was only one part of the depressing working conditions.
Primo: Plus I don't like to see people fucked up [handing over three vials to a nervously pacing customer]. This is fucked-up shit. I don't like this crack dealing. Word up.
[gunshots in the distance} Hear that?
Why then did Benzie ecstatically forfeit his steady job as maintenance engineer to work with Primo under thes-e conditions?
Benzie: I lost my job for hanging out with you [pointing to Primo and sniffing more cocaine].
At first even if we broke night [stayed awake partying 'all night}, the next day I went to my job. I was chilling and I JUSt walked in like nothing. Nobody - my boss, my supervisor - said nothing to me, because I was a maintenance engineer and I did everything.
Everything! No matter what it is, you do it.- You got to fix everything in the hotel. They call and complain, you gotta go and fix it, no matter what it is.
You know, like when the john leaks - whatever it is. Pipes - all that shit - you gotta go up and fix it.
And I had union and everything man, because when you're in the New York Yacht Club Union, you get union shit - I mean, you know, all the benefits.
That's a high-class place over there! I saw Mayor Koch eating there! Yeah I saw what's his name ... you know, that guy from the news! Man, I seen a lot of people eating' there.
It's like a membership shit. You gotta be a member of a yacht ship or some yacht shit! Those are people who got yatch'es. They rich! They got like little models of yatch'es all over the place. It's only whites eating there, like I seen alor'a' whites there.
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I never had no problem with white people. It was always: [bowing and imitating an upper-class accent} "How you doing?" [bowing again deeply, but then pausing to sniff} "Good morning." They're nice people though.
I lasted there. A long time. Like a year and a few months. I was making four jbills [$400} man! For five days work.
[continuing soberly} Now, the way I lost my job: I never forget that day: it was me, you [pointing to Primo}, Candy, and Flora and we stood at Candy's house and we broke night.
In a way, it was my own fault. I started messing around with Flora. And I was still with her in the morning.
I didn't go to work. I fucked up. I was sniffed up and I didn't call or anything the next day. I stayed with Flora.
Ultimately, Benzie pushed his macho street culture identity to its logical conclusion. He could not tolerate Ray's authority and ended up stealing money from him and forfeiting a court date for an arrest in a stolen car that was unrelated to crack dealing, but for which Ray had posted $2,500 worth of bail. After a brief stint in prison, "on Riker's," Benzie came full circle and found just above minimum wage employment in "food prep" at a health food cafeteria in a fitness gym - once again, surrounded as a subordinate by powerful whites. He managed to limit his alcohol and cocaine-cum-heroin binging to weekends. He enjoyed coming to the Game Room for visits to lecture Primo on the glories of legal employment. On cold nights after the Game Room was closed, we would often take refuge in a housing project stairwell where Primo and Benzie would sniff speedballs and we would all drink malt liquor until well past daybreak, tape-recording our conversations. 6
Benzie: The best way to be, is legal. Survive. Make your money and make everybody love you [opening a ten-dollar packet of heroin and handing me a quart of malt liquor to open].
I want you to be like that, Primo. I've been doing it a year, Primo. Look at this, box, [holding out a small plastic object] look what it says here. One year, this is a tie tack, this is a tack that goes on a tie. But it's because I've made a year. That's what it says there.
Do you know why I've made a year at this place? [sniffing heroin]
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Because I've been through fuckin' coke; [pointing to the cocaine Primo was crushing into sniffable powder in a folded dollar bill] I've been through fuckin' crack; I've been through marijuana; I've been through fuckin' every drug. I always was rroubulared. But now I'm finally getting mines - my capacidad [self-worth} - I've finally got to that stage that I won't do something. [pointing again to the cocaine} I'm tired of fuckin' crack living. [waving his arm at the vials littering the stairway} Serious, man.
Like right now [pausing to sniff cocaine] I do not do drugs.
Fuck! Look at my face. [moving it aggressively to within an inch of mine and taking the malt liquor bottle] I got a round face. When you do drugs you could tell by sorneone's face. [sniffing delicately from the packet of heroin, using Primo's key as a dipper].
All of a sudden as if a cocaine rush in his speedball high had triggered some particularly aggressive pathways 10 his brain, Benzie defensively addressed the difficulty of maintaining respect in the entry-level legal economy.
Benzie: But don't you ever disrespect me or dish me.
Primo: [soothingly] You're a working nigga' and I respect you the way you are right now. [turning to me] I respect him.
Benzie: [unmollified] I don't want someone to ~espect me. I want to respect myself.
I respect myself, man. [jabbing both forefingers into his chest} I changed. I'm a different person. I love myself. I'm not trying to brag or anything, you know. [swigging from the quart of malt liquor]
Primo: [to me reassuringly] It's like an outburst, Felipe. 'Cause Benzie feels so great, he feels so wonderful.
\
Benzie: [calmer, passing me the bottle] Man, I'm making eight
dollars a fuckin' hour. I'm a prep. I'm an assistant chef. I make eight dollars an hour. I make close to three hundred dollars a week. Okay, they take almost a hundred dollars, you know, in taxes and ... I get, like, two seventy-five - shit like that.
If you was to go home later on, you could see that I'm telling you the truth. And after taxes - they take like ninety, eighty
Cracebouse Management
dollars out of my shit. Like I would come home with my two seventy-five.
Primo: [proud of being privy to legal working-class hustles} That's because you only have one dependent. I always used to put three dependents.
Benzie: Btlt yo, I love myself. I'm proud of myself. You know, who's really fuckin' proud of me and who loves me, bro? My father, bro. He loves the shit out of me now.
My father's been a working man all his life. He came from PR when he was twenty-one. Right now, he's fifty-three years old. He's been a waiter all his life.
Primo: [in a low voice] Man! I don't want a job that's supposed to last you for your whole life. Man! I don't want to work for tips. I wanna work the way I wanna work.
[abruptly changing the subject} Let's go get another beer.
In private, especially in the last few years of my residence, Primo admitted that he wanted to go back to the legal economy.
Primo: I just fuck up the money here. I rather be legal.
Philippe: But you wouldn't be the head man on the block with so many girlfriends.
Primo: I might have women on my dick right now, but I would be much cooler if I was working legal. I wouldn't be drinking and the coke wouldn't be there every night.
Plus if I was working legally I would have women on my dick too, because I would have money.
Philippe: But you make more money here than you could ever make working legit.
Primo: Okay. So you want the money but you really don't want to do the job.
I really hate it, man. Hate it! I hate the people! I hate the environment! I hate the whole shit, man! But it's like you get caught up with it. You do it, and you say, "Ay, fuck it today!" Another day, another dollar. [pointing at an emaciated customer who was just entering]
But I don't really, really think that I would have hoped that I
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can say I'm gonna be richer one day. I can't say that. I think about it, but I'm just living day to day.
If I was working legal, I wouldn't be hanging out so much. I wouldn't be treating you. [pointing to the 16-ounce can of Colt 45 in my hand} In a job, you know, my environment would change . . . totally. 'Cause I'd have different friends. Right after work I'd go out with a co-worker, for lunch, for dinner. After work I may go home; I'm too tired for hanging out - I know I gotta work tomorrow.
After working a legal job, I'm pretty sure I'd be good.
The problem - as discussed in detail in Chapter 4 on the relationship of the crack dealers to the legal market - is that Primo's good intentions do not lead anywhere when the only legal jobs he can compete for fail to provide him with a livable wage. 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. Nevertheless, all of Primo's colleagues and employees told stories of rejecting what they considered to be intolerable working conditions at entry-level legal jobs. Benzie's case, for example, illustrates the complex role that subjective notions of dignity play in the process of rejecting legal employment and becoming a crack addict and then a dealer. Another one of Primo's lookouts, Willie, also had a legal-labor trajectory Defore being hired by Primo that illustrates the forces propelling a young man to seek refuge in the world of crack. Contradictorily, while Willie rejects the brutality of the working conditions he encountered in the legal labor market, he embraces an even more violent alternative that has him wreaking destruction on his neighbors and community.
In my whole life, I never got paid over six 'dollars an hour. The most I ever got was my last job when I worked at the ASPCA [American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty t\) Animals]. It was like two hundred and thirty dollars a week straight - then there was the taxes.
I remember my first day on the job. I had went there pretty well dressed and I'm working with this good-looking girl, so I'm like,
Crackhouse Management
I'm gonna rap with this chick. And then they pull out the carts full of gassed animals.
So I'm standing there with these rubber gloves, right? But I'm trying to stand back, you know, because I can't deal. I love animals ... youj know, I got three chihuahuas upstairs .
But the boss knew there was going to be trouble so they had overhired - that's how they always do it. They get rid of one person. So when the boss said, "You and her, do this," I did it.
But then I looked at this dead animal, and I got sick. And I've got on a button-down shirt, slacks, and I'm at this job in this big garage-type room with rubber gloves on, putting these laundry carts full of dead dogs, cats, baby dogs, baby cats that have all been gassed into a garbage truck.
I couldn't do it for long.
So one day they call me into the office and tell me, "You're not right for this job." So I got fired.
Management-Labor Conflict at the Game Room
Primo's options in the legal job market were no better than those of any of his employees, but on the stoop of the Game Room his vulnerability was not visible - especially when contrasted with that of his crackaddicted Customers and workers. He looked and behaved like an effective boss. Ultimately, however, Primo's relative autonomy and importance within Ray's network was eroded when Ray expanded his franchises. The Social Club's prime retail location on La Farrnacia's corner made it far more profitable than the Game Room. Ray instituted a double shift at the Social Club, keeping it open for sixteen hours every day except Sunday. Perhaps also because of his own personal fondness for the spot _ having grown up in the building - he invested in renovating the physical infrastructure. Soon the Social Club had a pool table, a powerful sound system, a flush toilet that worked some of the time, an air conditioner, and a heater. Ray also established an after-hours bar at the site, serving beer and Bacardi. For the upscale Customers and for hard-core intravenous cocaine users, in addition to the nickels of crack, he offered half-grams of relatively unadulterated cocaine for twenty dollars.
The expansion and diversification of Ray's network allowed him to be
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more manipulative in his management of labor relations. He began leveraging increased levels of discipline and higher profit margins from Primo at the Game Room. This initiated a protracted juggle for power between Primo and Ray. Ray's first action was to supersede Primo's right to hire assistants. He imposed his own choice of secondary employees to work as lookouts and sellers side by side with Primo. Primo rebelled against Ray's encroachment on his operational autonomy. He did not want to be demoted from manager to senior salesperson.
Ultimately, Primo lost out in this struggle for workplace autonomy, and his position as "manager" became increasingly ambiguous, until by the last two years of my residence on the block, Primo had lost all fiction of control over Game Room operations. Ray even managed to lower his piece-rate commissions from $1.00 to 75 cents per vial sold, although he did maintain an extra incentive by increasing the commission to $1. 75 per vial on nights when seven bundles [175 vials] were sold. Ray claimed that Primo had precipitated the changes because of his tardiness, absenteeism, and ineffectiveness in curbing violence and noise at the Game Room. For one ten-month period, Primo became so marginal that another three-quarters-time senior salesperson, Tony, was, hired and Ray limited Primo to only working two night shifts per week.
Primo responded to his lowered wages, reduced work hours, and lost managerial autonomy by escalating his alcohol and substance abuse. He became an even less punctual and more undisciplined worker, provoking Rayon several occasions to lay him off in retaliation for probationary two-week stretches. Part of the problem was rooted in the laws of supply and demand. The competition across the block in the project stairwells had permanently dropped the prices of their vials from three dollars to two dollars, and a conglomerate of companies located on another crack corner two blocks away had cut its prices from five dollars to three dollars, while simultaneously increasing the quality of its product.
Ray made a last-ditch effort to retain market share by upgrading the Game Room's locale. He moved operations upstairs to the newly vacated premises where three licensed doctors had formerly operated an illegal Medicaid-funded pill mill. This temporarily raised morale among his workers but did not affect sales significantly. We critiqued and debated the boss's management strategies in much the same mundane way that anxious employees in a retail enterprise in the legal sector who are in danger of being laid off, will speculate on the reasons for declining
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CrackhoztSe Management
Primo feeding cocaine to Caesar on the benches of a housing project courtyard, after closing the Game Room. Photo by Susan Meiselas.
business. Relaxing after the end of the night shift in my apartment living room with Primo and Caesar, I tape-recorded one particularly anxious conversation. For the preceding two weeks, the Game Room had been shut down because of intensified police sweeps, and upon reopening that night, Ray had introduced a lower-quality product. (The Dominican wholesaler who formerly supplied him with cocaine at the kilo level had been arrested and his new connection had provided him with inferior cocaine.)
Before speaking morosely, Caesar opened a glassine envelope of heroin, sniffed from it, and then tossed the packet Onto my coffee table. He then immediately reached for the folded dollar bill containing cocaine that Primo had just crushed. Primo pulled the cocaine away from him,
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saying, "Chill man, let me feed youl" and turned to me for emphasis: "I hate it when this nigga' gets thirsty." Primo then scooped a folded matchbook corner into the pile of cocaine and held it up to Caesar's nose for him to sniff with a grimace that effectively closed off one nostril while opening the other one wide. He repeated the motions three more times until Caesar finally sat back calmly on my couch, nodding a thanks
to Primo.
Caesar: [speaking slowly} Tonight was slow, we only made twenty-two dollars and fuckin' fifty cents. And I be risking getting snatched and dirt yin' my (police} record for chump change from
that fat-assed nigga'.
Ray's gonna lose a lotta business with no light up there. And no
one wants to walk up those stairs.
Primo: No, it's not the place of the business. It's just that we're
selling two-dollar bottles for five bucks [sniffing}.
Caesar: Yeah, the bottles are toO small. (gravely} Lately Ray's been fucking up with the product, man. He's like switching product. It'll be good; then it'll be fucked up; then it'll be good; then
it'll be fucked up.
Primo: The real problem is that they be small bottles.
Caesar: Plus it was a major mistake to be closed all tha~ time and
then the first time we open we be selling shit.
How you gonna open up and sell fire? 'Cause that's what the
customers said it is. The cracks taste like fire. That shit isnasty!
He's fucking us up because a lot of people don't come back, man. And people be complaining that we are selling fire.
[picking up his tempo, feeling a rush of energy from the cocaine}
, \
I done told Ray, "What's up? This shit is garbage." But he's like,
"Fuck youl I sell it like that."
Primo: [sniffing} I never tell him shit, especially tonight. I think
he had a roach up his ass, 'cause it's slow. He was pissed off 'cause the electrician from Con Ed [New York City'S electrical utility
company} didn't show up today.
When I pushed the conversation into a discussion of how they could tolerate being minimum wage crack dealers, they responded with selfcongratulatory, glorifying reminiscences of nights of record sales. Perhaps
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the same types of dialogue could be tape-recorded after-hours among heavy-drinking used-car salesmen during a recession in the local economy.
Caesar: [sniffing more cocaine from Primo's upheld matchbook] Nah, Felipe, it's not so bad. It's slow tonight because it's Monday, and the end of the month, and nobody ain't got no money. [excited} Primo left out of here the other day with almost three hundred bucks all by himself.
Primo: [smiling] It was the first of the month and everybody had got paid.
Caesar: [taking more cocaine} It was a huge day for selling.
Everything comes on the first of the month: all the checks.
Primo: Yeah! Everybody got paid [grinning}. Because the first of the month is like when welfare checks, rent checks, social security checks, all come. The first of the month is definitely monneeey [licking his lips}.
Caesar: For everybody! Veterans' checks, pensions, social security, welfare, Jew checks ... [noting my raised eyebrows] You know, Jews be into crazy scams, making money with papers ... you know, insurance, real estate, shit like that. The Jews be picking up checks. [wiggling his forefingers greedily with a devious grin}
On the first of the month, money flows.
Primo: Everyone was coming. Welfare recipients and workers. sold twelve bundles.
Ray's sales remained slow for the next several months and morale among his workers continued to plummet, while tensions mounted. Ray ordered Primo to fire Caesar following a series of loud drunken arguments, but Primo refused. Ray retaliated by switching Primo's schedule to working on Monday and Tuesday nights instead of Thursday and Friday nights. Thursday is an especially coveted night to sell on because it is payday for municipal employees.
In a classic example of the internalization of labor-management antagonisms, Primo and Caesar redoubled their hatred for Tony, the replacement employee whom Ray had hired a few months earlier to discipline Primo and Caesar. Tony reciprocated their antagonism. This escalated into a potentially lethal confrontation when three bundles of crack disap-
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peared from the stash inside the Pac-Man video machine during the interval between Primo's Tuesday night shift and Tony's Wednesday shift. Everyone professed innocence, but there was no sign of forced entry and Tony and Primo were the only two people besides Ray to have keys to the locale. Ray wanted to kill - or at least break the legs - of the culprit, but he could not decide whom to punish.
The following Thursday, another three bundles were stolen from the overnight stash, which had been rotated to a live electrical socket for protection. Ray was not only furious but also helpless - a condition that made him even more dangerous than he normally is. To save face he began deducting the value of the stolen bundles from both Primo's and Tony's wages on a fifty-fifty basis. Sales on Primo's Mondayand Tuesday night shifts, however, were so low that Ray had to set up an installment plan for his reimbursement. Primo and Caesar were allowed to keep their full Monday night commission in return for surrendering all of Tuesday night's receipts until their share of the $450 worth of missing merchandise was accounted for.
Sensing that he was the prime suspect, Caesar was especially vocal in denouncing Tony as the thief. He repeatedly advocated "wasting the motherfucker." Those of us who frequented the Gan:te Room regularly were convinced that Caesar had stolen the crack. Primo could not help but share this suspicion. It depressed him that his best friend and employee - his "main nigga' " - could have disrespected him so profoundly. It was during these tense weeks that I tape-recorded many of Primo's most insightful denunciations of how he was trapped in the crack economy.
The mysterious disappearance of the six bundles was. finally resolved with the anticipated life-threatening beating, but neither Tony nor Primo nor even Caesar were the victims. The thief was Garo, Ray's jack-of-all-trades maintenance worker who had renovated the new locale upstairs from the Game Room. In the process he had hollowed our fake paneling under the floor, to which he had access after hours via the abandoned building behind the Game Room. He knew the kinds of places where Ray kept his stashes because he repaired all his video games and maintained his electrical systems. In fact, he was the one who had pirated the electricity to the new crackhouse our of a neighboring bodega. We could not help but feel sorry for Gato when Ray brought him back to the Game Room three days later to start working off the debt he
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owed by fixing Some newly acquired broken machines. Gato climbed awkwardly out of Ray's Lincoln Continental limping heavily from the beating he had received three days earlier. He avoided eye COntact with all of us. We all left the premises hurriedly when he started unscrewing the back of a broken video game because he reeked from the acrid smell specific to homeless crack bingers who have no access to showers or clean clothes. That he was still alive with no bones broken was a testimony to his childhood friendship with Ray, whom he had faithfully followed as a teenage member of "The Cheeba Crew" (TCC) Some dozen years earlier.
Ray took advantage of the tensions generated by this incident to renegotiate Tony's salary from a piece-rate commission to a set wage of $100 per shift, regardless of how many bundles were sold. This was especially profitable for Ray because Tony worked on the nights when sales were at their highest volume, Wednesday through Saturday. Relations were too strained between Tony and Primo for them to coordinate their demands for a higher proportion of Ray's profits. In fact, in a classic divide-and-conquer scenario, neither worker even knew what kind of payment arrangement his nemesis had negotiated with their mutual boss.
The Crackhouse Clique: Dealing with Security
Primo's subordination to Ray was not immediately visible to the clique of parasitical friends, acquaintances, and wanna-be employees who congregated in front of the Game Room on most nights. When Primo was on duty, he appeared to his hang-out crowd to be well in control. He was exceptionally generous, and he regularly treated his friends co beer, liquor, and occasional sniffs of cocaine. I had assumed originally that Primo cultivated a large hang-out crowd to fulfill a psychological need for power and domination, especially vis-a-vis the teenage women competing for his sexual attention.
It took me several months to realize that the people reclining on car hoods, squatting on neighboring Stoops, or tapping their feet to the ubiquitous rap or salsa playing on sorneone's radio, served several different useful roles for the crackhouse. They provided strategic business information on competing drug spots and on the changing trends in tastes and market shifts in the underground economy. As long as they did not become too rowdy, they also served to camouflage the comings and goings of the emaciated addicts, making the crackhouse look more
In Searc» ot «espect
Hanging out in the Game Room. Photo by Oscar Vargas.
like a youth center than a place of business. A subtle touch of "normalcy" was added by the presence of Primo's adopted grandfather, Abraham, who was responsible for collecting the quarters from the video, machines. Whenever potential undercover narcotic detectives entered the Game Room, this hopelessly alcoholic seventy-two-year-old man pretended to be senile. He exuded an aura of helplessness and gentleness that was accentuated by the homemade black patch covering his left eye, which he had lost when a mugger stabbed him while he was home from his job at
the cafeteria of Lenox Hill Hospital in the early I 980s. 7 '
Most importantly, the hang-out crowd complemented the lookout's
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job by protecting the Game Room from excessive violence and aggression. Primo's best and cheapest insurance against physical assault was to surround himself with a network of people who genuinely respected and liked him. His crowd of friends became an effective army of detectives for investigating foul play; for warning him of potential stickup artists who might be casing the premises; or for shielding and witnessing when an attack actually occurred. Indeed, assault by thieves represented Primo's greatest physical danger. Whenever two people walked into the Game Room at the same time or at a fast pace, he always tensed up. He also usually suspected new people who joined his hang-out crowd of being emissaries gathering intelligence for a future holdup crew.
Primo's fears were well founded. During the five and a half years that I documented the Game Room's operations, it was robbed twice by masked men bearing sawed-off shotguns. Primo confided to me that during the first robbery he had urinated in his pants with his attacker's shotgun pressed against his temple while he lied about not having a stash of cash. Nevertheless, when he reported the theft to his boss later that night, Primo had exaggerated how much money and crack was stolen in order (0 keep the difference.
Prin.o considered somewhat insulting my functionalist interpretation of whj ie treated his friends and acquaintances so generously. Nevertheless, in. his counterexplanarions he reaffirmed the sense of tension and imminent danger he was forced to endure every night. More subtly, he made me realize that the hang-out crew was more than physical protection, it provided a stabilizing social atmosphere for him to counterbalance the anxiety that constantly threatens to disable a lonesome seller. His peers distracted and relaxed him from the dangerous reality of his work site:
Primo: I don't need anyone to protect me, Felipe. Naah. I can handle myself alone. It's just like I want my people to be there for me.
It don't have to be O.D. here. [pointing to Willie, who was working lookout that night] It could be anybody that's keeping me company. It could even be Jackie [his girlfriend at the time].
See, just so long as there's someone I could talk to, to keep me company. It could even be just Maria [his former girlfriend, whom
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In Search of Respect
he had temporarily broken up with]. But Ray don't like Maria hanging out; he don't know her all that well. She's not from the block.
You understand? I just want someone to accompany me ... just for the company. You know, it's hard to just be in this dump by yourself.
Because if you're by yourself you know you feel ... you be more edgy. It's boring and I need to be more relaxed.
And if anything, you always want a witness or somebody to be there . . . you know.
Ironically, it took me several years to realize that Primo's enthusiastic friendship with me was part of the unconscious logic for why he maintained a hang-out crew in front of the Game Room. The disconcerting presence of a white face at night in an EI Barrio crackhouse was probably an even better deterrent to potential stickup artists than Willie's large frame, Caesar's reputation for irrational -violence, or anyone of the teenage girls flirting with Primo. Stickup artists are simply not willing to take the risk of assaulting anyone who could possibly be confused as an undercover police officer. There are too many other easy targets around.
Another crucial service fulfilled by Primo's hang-out network as well as his lookouts was to screen for narcotics agents. 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 impostor. The best lookouts and street sellers are those who have hung out in the streets all their lives and know everyone in the neighborhood. When Prime-did not recognize someone or sensed something suspicious about a customer, he checked first with his lookout, or with one of his friends outside on the stoop, before serving them. The most frequent confusion arose oyer men who had just been released from prison and had not yet destroyed their bodies on crack.
Primo: Yo Caesar, who were those two morenos? I didn't even know the motherfuckers. They could be fa jara [the police].
Caesar: Yeah, it's okay. They were good-looking and dressed well, but I know that big black Alabama. He's cool. I know him. He's walked in the Game Room before, it's just that you don't remember,
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"
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C rackhouse Management
He musca just came outra jail because that nigga' looked fresh union. That nigga' was healthy. He was like a Buster Douglas size.
In the five years that I knew Primo he must have made tens of thousand" of hand-to-hand crack sales; more than a million dollars probably passed through his fingers. Despite this intense activity, however, he was only arrested twice, and only two other sellers at the Game Room were arrested during this same period. No dealer was ever caught at Ray's other crackhouses, not even at the Social Club on La Farrnacia's corner, even though its business was brisker. Ironically, the Social Club was raided half a dozen times, because it doubled as a pool hall and bootleg bar. The large clientele of omnipresent regulars confused the police; they never knew whom to arrest. They could not expropriate the landlord, because the City of New York was the owner. The original proprietor had long since defaulted on his taxes. Instead, on two occasions the police smashed the pool tables into kindling wood, ripped out the electrical fixtures, and boarded over the entrance. On one raid, they ticketed Candy for serving unlicensed liquor to an undercover officer, but they were never able to apprehend the primary seller-manager in the act of a hand-tohand narcotics sale. The biggest threat to the Social Club came from the New York City fire marshals, who sealed the place on several occasions for violating fire codes following the much publicized arson of a social club in the South Bronx that took the lives of eighty-four people. 8
The invulnerability of Ray's crackhouses to police control was largely owing to the generalized public sector breakdown of the neighborhood. 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.? The attitude of honest officers is too hostile toward the local community for them to be able to build the networks that would allow them to document the operations of the numerous drug-dealing Spots in the neighborhoods they patrol. For example, after five and a half years of being practically the only white person out on the street after dark on a regular basis on my block, which hosted almost a half-dozen drug-selling Spots, the police never learned to recognize me. Even after I began attending their community outreach meetings for combating drugs, they continued to fail to recognize me on the street. 10
Ray and his workers took certain basic precautions to minimize their risk of arrest. They never made sales outside the door on the street, and they usually asked customers to step behind a strategically placed PacMan machine at the back of the establishment before touching their money and handing them the vials of crack, in case the police were watching with binoculars from a neighboring apartment building. Most importantly, at no point was there more than twenty-five vials - one bundle - visibly accessible. Depending on the night and the season, additional bundles might be strategically hidden in rotated stashes, such as the live overhead electrical socket, the linoleum wall paneling, or the entrails of one of the video games. Depending on supply and demand, runners periodically delivered extra bundles and picked up cash receipts.
Sellers have to develop the crucial skill of judging when it is necessary to stash their vials in the event of a raid. This was what saved Primo, for example, from four years of incarceration on his last arrest. As the police were battering down the Game Room door with their portable ram he flicked thirteen vials from his current bundle into the back of a Mario Brothers video machine. The police found nothing in their search of the premises. At the same time, if a seller becomes overly paranoid - petro - of every suspicious siren and revving car motor, the smooth operations of the crackhouse become excessively disrupted. Dealers have to juggle between relaxation and acute premonition. In Primo's case, strategically dispensing beer and cocaine to his friendly hang-out clique was crucial to maintaining this delicate balance of calm alertness.
Primo, Caesar, and other dealers provided me with dozens of accounts of close calls with the police. They had developed complex, riskminimization strategies.
Caesar: [drinking from a 16-ounce can of malt Iiquor] I'm not gonna get caught with the stash on me. I'll pitch it or hide it fast. I gOt a clean slate. So I don't even think I would even get bail. They'll call it being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I don't sell to people I don't know, never. Pops only made that mistake a coupla' times in the Game Room, but that was when it was wild man.
Primo: [also drinking from a separate 16-ounce can of malt liquor] Yeah, I only got caught once like that, in a buy-and-bust. But there's been times when cops came to buy but I knew it and I was cool.
110 Way back when my grandfather Abraham was still hanging out here. I was reading in the newspapers about that guy, Larry Davis, who killed those cops. I was chilling, reading.
Caesar: My cousin's in jail with Larry Davis in Louisiana on some wild federal charge.
Primo: Shut up Caesar, let me finish.
So I 'was reading that Larry Davis thing out loud to Abraham, because he can't read English, when this guy in an army jacket came in - but he was white.
I don't even know why they sent him. He looked like an obvious cop. I pretended I didn't see him, when he walked in. I kept reading like that [peering deeply into an imaginary newspaper]. So he walked past me, to the back and asked Abraham for the shit. But Abraham realized quick what was up and he just went, "Wahhhh?" [imitating a senile old man slobbering at the mouth]. And I was in the front, reading the paper like this [crossing his legs awkwardly perched on a milk crate] and there were kids playing, and it was cool.
Then he said to me, "They still sell crack here?" but I just went, "I don't know," and kept reading my paper.
He was a cop because I seen the man in the day, with the regular blue suit on.
Primo attributed to carelessness the one time he was successfully arrested and convicted.
Primo: I gor my [criminal} record back when O.D. was hanging with me. Oh man, I got jerked! I was Outside with a mirror, trimming my hair like that. It was early in the day; it was like four o'clock. I used to open earlier in them days. Like one or two, because Felix was like, "Gotta be there, boy!' .' I used to hate that.
So Abraham calls me, because I didn't notice the guy go in because I was talking with O.D., trimming my shit.
So I went in and he was pretending he was playing Pac-Man. So then I didn't even bother to look at him, it was like he had a gold chain, short pants, and everything.
So I took the shit from where we kept it right there in a little thin box [pointing in the direction of the current stash]. He tells me he wants five. And when I was serving him, was when I looked at his face; I said to myself, "Shit, I don't know this motherfucker!" He looked like so clean-cut, y gordito [and chubby]; I was like [waving his arms in confusion}.
So I tell him, "How do you smoke this? Put it in the pipe; or do you smoke woolas [a crack and marijuana mixture]?" He said, "You got that too?" and I said, "No, I'm just asking." So he left.
And when he left, I told O.D., "Yo, wait a minute. Let me stash the shit." Because I didn't trust that dude. But O.D. followed me. He was talking to me so much shit about his problems that I got distracted [drinking).
And when I turned to put the vials away, like that [going through the motions}, right there they pushed me [coming over to me and throwing me against a video machine in a half-nelson]. I thought it was Eddie just fucking around so I continued; but when I finished I looked and the cop was already ready to blow me away like that [holding an imaginary gun up to my temple] - or whatever. He was taking precautions. Them niggas just rushed us, boy [drinking). He pulled the shit out and said "This is what we're looking for" [holding out a handful of crack vials and grinning cruelly] .
I got jerked for selling five vials - two-to-four, years probation [shaking his head sadly, drinking, and handing me the bottle].
A year later, as the New York state penal system spiraled into a crisis owing to overcrowding following the precipitous increase. in drug arrests and the toughening of drug-sentencing rules, an exasperated judge declared Primo's suspended sentence to be completed a year early, in order to clear his overburdened docket. Primo had been arrested for failing to report to his probation officer, a violation that under n9rmal condi rions might have resulted in his incarceration for the full term of his probation sentence.
Following his second arrest for a hand-to-hand sale of ten dollars' worth of crack to an undercover officer, once again the mayhem of New York's drug enforcement strategy in the early 1990S saved Primo from becoming a predicate felon and having to serve four to six years in jail. II In their disorganized haste to boost arrest statistics, the Tactical Narcotics Team officers who engineered the buy-and-bust operation on the
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Crackhouse Management
Game Room confused the identities of Primo and Caesar in the COUrtroom. The jury was forced to free Primo when Caesar derailed the prosecution's case by insinuating under oath - but with the protection of the Fifth A,imendment - that he had actually been the one who had sold the crack to the undercover officers. Ray and several of the crackhouse habitues had the pleasure of watching the judge rebuke the district attorney for having wasted the COUrt's time with a sloppy case. Primo was fully vindicated, and the Game Room stayed in business for another year with no police raids. 13
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Bourgois makes an intersting statement when he claims that: “the logistics of selling crack are not dramatically different from those of any other risky private sector retail enterprise.” In other words, he is suggesting that a drug business is not that different from a risky traditional business. While his claim was particularly shocking to me at first, after reading the rest of his piece and thinking about his claim in the context of The Wire, it definitely makes more sense. What does this say about of economic system that these two industries are run in such similar ways?
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As we talked about in class, the familial institution plays a critical role in The Wire. It not only plays the traditional institutional role but, furthermore, creates the foundations and dynamics of the drug institution.
In our critique we alluded to the idea that, in the drug institution, family has a different connotation. Furthermore, we recognized that in the hierarchy of each drug “family” there was rarely, if ever, direct family members in line after each other — it was always a cousin next in line followed by some other distant relative and so on and so forth (think Avon to D’Angelo). This structure also appears in the Bourgois reading.
Why do you think drug “families” structured in this manner? Because youth are more times than not encouraged to remain in the game and follow in their parents footsteps, I don’t see it as preventative and protective measures.
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I think one possible reason why there are no direct family lineage lines of power in a drug family is to avoid conflict with the nuclear family. This is just speculation after watching a movie like The Godfather, or reading articles about Roman emperors and the conflict over power. Many times, when the next in line is the eldest son, younger, more ambitious sons are not against killing their older brother to take the throne. I am not sure if these drug families would take this into consideration, but perhaps they are trying to avoid conflict with their children and step children, adn therefore deflect power to more extended family members.
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From the descriptions of the “Game Room”, it is apparent that the crack house is run like any other business. There is organization, methods for conducting transactions, hierarchy etc. Within the Wire the organization of the drug industry is demonstrated as well through the division of workers between the towers and the streets. As well there is discipline in order for transactions to be done properly. In my opinion, a crack business is run like any other white collar industry with a hierarchical structure. However we view and acknowledge the crack industry as a ‘low life’ un-trained underground industry. Within the Wire and this article, leaders of the crack industry are smart and profit maximizing businessmen. Do you believe that crack industry workers work-ethics can be translated into a white collar occupation? Or are these workers so disciplined and in line because their ‘profession’ puts their life on the line on a daily basis?
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I think work-ethic is too circumstantial and individualized to draw this overarching conclusion. I agree that crack houses are very tightly run organizations that teach skills such as discipline, hard work, but I am skeptical that these skills can be translated to white collar work. An individual’s work-ethic is usual determined by the enjoyment they get out of the job, the opportunity for advancement, tangible benefits, etc. In a crack organization, the workers are more or less surrounded by their peers/friends in a familiar environment and receiving cash on a daily basis (and sometimes more than they would at a low-minimum wage job). I am not saying that individuals who work in crack organizations have bad work-ethics, I just think that work-ethic depends on the job and the person’s interest in it. Drug dealing is a job that has a very easy entry, tangible benefits, and really no formal rules. I think these qualities are some of the main qualities that determine the staunch discipline and work ethic of a drug dealing organization that would not necessarily occur in white collar occupations.
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I am very interested to talk more about the ways that the Barksdale organization manages to mimic the structure of well-run corporations. Stringer Bell acts as a kind of CFO for the group, making purchases of product and organizing the workers underneath him in the management of the business. Avon Barksdale is also certainly high on the hierarchy, but plays a very different role. He does not seem to see the organization as “business only.” He places a great emphasis on loyalty to one’s family and pride in the street. He certainly does not fit the mold of businessman. The organization crumbles when these two individuals come to odds during the third season. As they attempt to take each other out of the question after growing more and more frustrated, the entire Barksdale organization crumbles with them. Having too many managers who conflict with each other is an issue of many corporate structures, and that certainly seems to be the case with the Barksdales.
We talked at the beginning of the semester about public bureaucracies like schools and police departments, where the lower-level workers are the ones with the most autonomy. That is certainly not the case with the Barksdale organization. Instead of doing a service for the city of Baltimore, they are preying on its weaknesses.
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I find it intriguing how the rules of the game are never spelt out yet seem to be so ubiquitous. Ray is able to manage his cartel due to experience in a gang, so the same type of courtesies are extended to different formations of individuals. Thinking back to the scene where the attempted hit on Omar on a Sunday morning nicks his grandmother’s hat and how that reflected poorly on the Barksdale crew because it was on a Sunday. While so much of what we read and view seems incredibly inhumane, I find it almost amusing at the “rules” that are obeyed to maintain a sense of dignity in a trade that doesn’t seem to value human dignity at all.
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I also find this very interesting. It reminds me of the scene we saw from The Wire where McNulty is asking young gang members why they continued to let a cheat participate in gambling games. The reply was that “This is America” (or something to that extent). I find it interesting that these gangs hold some values in such high regard while at the same time being able to take human lives so easily. How do you think these individuals justify their actions/reasoning to themselves? Why is this the issue where some values that we would consider less important are held in such high regard in these gangs?
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I think another very interesting part of the game is the way all the different organizations participate in and have respect for high-level meetings and talks. The example where Omar meets with Stringer while Omar is wearing a wire comes to mind. Even though these two people hate each other and have tried to kill each other multiple times, Prop Joe’s word keeps the conversation civilized. The “respect” of the game extends to the people who play it.
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When I think of the concept of the game I think of it as a big chess board. Back in 1700s if a town was taken over and the villagers were taken, the women and children were returned. That was the rule, they were not part of the game, they had nothing to do with the conflict and so they were released. Omar’s catch line is that he never turned his gun on someone who was not in the game. Even the drug game ahs rules because if it didn’t there would be no organization involved, everyone would end up killing each other and it wouldn’t matter how much money was made or who worked for who. It was all be chaos. There needs to be rules or the game doesn’t work.
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The previous comments all seem to skirt around the fact that the rules the characters of The Wire follow are all in the context of their environment. The rules are an attempt to bridge the gap between the rules of the game and the rules followed by society at large; this however falters every time as the environment in which these characters live requires them to continue to follow the rules of the game or risk their livelihoods and lives.
I also agree with Mattia’s comment that the game respects those who play by the rules, to an extent. With the exception of the rare truly evil individual (Marlo Stanfield), the heads down to the hoppers in any crew will respect those who respect the rules of the game; those who don’t “get got.”
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I found this paragraph so interesting because of the creation of some type of kinship ties that Ray cultivated in order for the business to function in a way that “sanctifies solidarity and reciprocal obligations between men”. This system, that develops a sense of kinship and family that is fostered between all the workers becomes an integral piece of the running of the business. I think this can most obviously be seen in D’s interactions with his mother when she is reminding him that if “you ain’t got family what the hell you got”. This bond that friends of Ray’s have with him is deepened into a kinship/family bond to reinforce the sense of obligation to one another and the organization to ensure loyalties that extend beyond loyal out of friendship to a sense of forced loyalty.
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This is one of the key areas in which drug organizations differ from other corporate structures. Because they come with a certain amount of risk and danger, workers need to have more of a commitment to the business than merely working for their own wages. Individuals need to feel loyalty to one another in order for the business to continue to function. This can come from the extended kinship networks present in many African-American communities. Instead of a tight nuclear family, African-Americans often turn to aunts, uncles, cousins, and even neighbors to fill the space of family. These relationships can be as strong as those developed between parents and children or between siblings. The individuals with whom one lives or goes to school can then translate into drug gangs later on.
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I find this interesting as well. I wonder if the involvement of family is a hindrance or an aid though. Things can get tricky when dealing with family. It is harder to fire a family member from the drug trade than a worker from a legal business. At the same time family ties create more loyalty to the business. What do you think? Does the involvement of family make a stronger or weaker business?
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The thing about these drug organizations is that they know the risk they run when running their business. They are faced with the threat of being busted by the police, the face the threat of other gangs that hope to take over their territory and push them out and they face the threat of thieves like Omar coming and knocking up their safe houses. With all these external issues they last thing the leaders of these organizations can be worried about it the threat from within their own organizations. The only solution is fear. Make everyone fear you more than anything else and they will not cross you. Family, friends, enemies, doesn’t matter. If they all fear you the same amount then they will not try you. This fear promotes a type of cohesion within your organization as well as inspires fear in other organizations to not attempt to mess with you. That is why Avon Barksdale is on top of Baltimore for so long. Family is an added set of hands because they do not need to be scared into helping you.
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I agree with Anthony in that the use of strong family ties sets drug organizations apart from other corporate structures. Corporations require potential employees to formally apply for a position and go through a series of interviews. in drug organizations, individuals recruit new members from their own families. Having blood-related kin or employees affiliated through marriage adds extra insurance that it is in everyone’s best interest that the business flourishes. Employes are less likely to snitch or sabotage the operations if their own family members are involved. It is interested that Rap’s manipulation of kinship networks is what brings him success in the drug business. We see this in The Wire. As noted in the “Barksdale Women” article by Courtney D. Marshall, when Stringer Bell is with D’Angelo’s son, he says take care of this “little soldier.” It can be a term of endearment or it foreshadows that the boy will eventually enter the drug business. Selecting family members to grow the corporation is efficient because these people have been around the business as children and are well versed in the unwritten rules of respect and loyalty.
I find the idea of quasi kin-relationships being fostered by two men having fathered children by the same woman. I hope such relations are not forced upon women. The role of women in the game varies by location and how they are related to key players. Mothering children by different is not a method of gaining respect I would have ever imagined to exist in reality.
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Janelle makes a valid point. The Drug trade separates itself from other corporations for the reasons listed above. Family members are recruited by current members of the drug trade so that the family is able to stay connected and stay financially secure. A large factor of the game on the street is looking out for their families, protecting their mothers, their brothers and their children. This is emphasized by Breanna’s visit to D in prison, where she convinces him to take the fall so she can remain on the outside, with a great deal of money in her pocket. Keeping the drug trade “in the family” also allows for them to keep an eye on their “soldiers” and to ensure the security of the organization. The Wire illustrates the manipulation of kinship networks to ensure loyalty and ensure respect.
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This description of Cesar ignoring his wife as she was injured is saddening but shows how serious dealers within the crack industry take their job. I can’t help but draw similarities between workers in the crack industry and workers in high powered white collar occupations such as Wall Street. Although both professions seem as if they are on opposite spectrums, I believe they share many similarities. Crack dealers and wall street brokers are both in high stakes games, with their livelihoods on the line. As well, they are in the “game” and are willing to take high risks and chances in order to “win” big. Similarly, I believe both can sacrifice friendships and family bonds in order to get head/ make it out alive in the industry. This is not to day that all people within both industries are like this, however portrayals of Bernie Madoff and characters such as Stringer in theWire make me come to this conclusion. Is this comparison between crack dealers and high ranking white collar employees too much of a long shot or can similarities be drawn?
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I definitely see the parallels, and it also makes me think of the description of work in the drug trade being addictive. I think the same can be said for high-level white collar jobs – this is exactly what we think of when we hear the term “workaholics.” I think for both sets of workers, their jobs become much more than just a career; they become a way of life, and carry with them an entire host of expectations, styles, and behaviors that create a subculture within whatever context the business works in. While I think it would be safe to say that leaving the drug trade game would pose greater personal danger to those who try to do so (which I guess is to say, poses a danger to those who try to do so and either fail or are caught before they are successful), I think this idea of the game can be extended across all sorts of career tracks.
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I thought you made an excellent comparison between drug dealers and wealthy businessmen. Both industries seem to attract the same type of people, people who are willing to work harder than everyone else in society to succeed. In the case of poor black males in the ghetto, this ambition take the form of entering the drug trade because they take on huge legal risks in order to enter the most lucrative job market available to them. On Wall Street this ambition can take the form of 80 hour work weeks, in order to receive very large bonuses at the end of the year. In both cases large sacrifices are being made in order to reach the top of society. Businessmen and drug dealers are both willing to sacrifice large amounts of their free time in order to succeed based on the opportunities given to them. I think most people would agree that had Stringer been born into better circumstances he would be the CEO of a company. Perhaps the reverse applies to many CEOs, who would be running drug gangs had they been born into Stringer Bell’s circumstances.
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In The Wire, we rarely see drug dealers who also use the drugs they sell. In fact, we rarely see people using drugs at all (except Bubbles). For the most part, the drug dealers in the Wire are all reasonably smart men who are in the game for the money and the respect. Is this a fair depiction of drug dealers?
This reading makes it seem like drugs have a much stronger grip on the life of a drug dealer. Addiction to the product being sold is a very real problem that the Wire doesn’t really address very well. Even more, the Wire doesn’t really explore in depth the effect that drug use has on the inner city.
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I do believe that this is a fair assumption of the better drug dealers. If you are really in the game to make money, it must be clear to the dealer that he can make more money if he is not using the product that he is selling. I do not really agree with this reading. The drugs that are sold in The Wire, are much heavier drugs that one can get addicted to. The is a huge difference between selling marijuana and using it than selling cocaine and using it. If one got addicted to the drug they sold and could not pay off the supplier, they would not be a drug dealer for very long.
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I feel like the one way to exploit drug addicts ability to “work” is to keep them on a short leash by supplying them with drugs. However, The Wire does not portray this as one of the methods that drug dealers use. I’m curious as to whether this is tactic is just not used in Baltimore because Baltimore gangs are not as organized as the gangs in other bigger cities (as mentioned in class) or the writers just decided to omit it. How come everyone who is on the supplier side of drugs in The Wire do not show this exploitation of the drug addicts? Even Julius Wilson mentions how drug dealers use drug addicts on the corner for roles that do not require them to get their hands on the stash. Along with the issues of gang rape, isn’t this an important evil aspect of the drug dealers/gang activity that The Wire needed to portray?
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In The Wire, it seems like those who work the corners are frowned upon when they use what they are selling. Obviously in the party scenes they have access to drugs, but when Wallace goes on a bender, it seems like further evidence to the crew that he should be a target. When I think of addicts, I think of Bubbles and almost scoff at the possibility that he would be allowed to work for Marlo or the Barksdale crews just because he is so unpredictable. I never imagined that in other scenarios, dealers use this addiction as an advantage to maintain cash flow and the dependence of their workers.
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I find your statements very accurate. I never really understood why drug dealers were looked down upon if they used the same drugs they were selling. By watching the Wire I have noticed that it is really about the dependence of workers and respect. No one wants to disrespect their superiors in fear of being beaten or even losing their lives. The workers in the Wire seem to never mess with the drugs their selling which makes them efficient drug dealers.
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I understand why dealers dabbling in drugs is frowned upon, especially when they are soldiers of a robust and powerful apparatus like the Barksdale organization. It is extremely important to have a clear head, to be aware of our surroundings, and to be grounded. The drug trade demands a person’s undivided attention and doesn’t allow much time for freedom. The time that we see the dealers getting high is when there is a party and a girl ends up dead. Bad things seem to be inextricably linked to the drugs they are doing.
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This paragraph immediately made me think back to Anderson’s discussion of street code and many of the readings that we have done that address social or street capital. The reason Caesar is a successful lookout it because he has the right characteristics that are valued on the street: he can instill fear, he has violent rage that makes him respected, and is not afraid to put someone in their place. These characteristics that make him a successful employee in the game are obviously in stark contrast to characteristics that make employees in the legal business world successful. However, I think that having an awareness of your environment and what will make you successful is key for both realms. Although what these things are may be drastically difference, an intuitive, good worker always seems to be one who is keyed in to the code of the workplace, and capitalizes on it.
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I agree that these players in the game are merely using the skills necessary to get ahead in their business. For many, they feel as if they have no choice. It is also very easy for people who are “outside of the game” to say that they choose to get into the game. I do not agree that it is easy to avoid the game in urban culture but I do think that individuals are able to know right from wrong. Caesar is able to understand that what he is a part of is wrong and therefore something he should try to get away from at all possible. While urban culture does present a sort of entrapment, it does not destroy all moral fiber that people have.
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I agree with Jacqueline that there is something to be admired about any good worker who understands their environment and capitalizes on it. All jobs, even jobs on the street, instill important life skills such as hard work, discipline, knowledge of environment, and strong work-ethic. Yet, when I think of these characteristics that many street kids possess and use everyday in their drug organization, I do not see these skills being able to be translated to the legal business world. Why is that? Is the culture of the street and the culture of the legal business world just so different that disciplined, hard working street kids cannot thrive in the legal business world?
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I have difficulty agreeing that ‘street jobs’ instill life skills, strong work ethic, etc. I believe when we try rationalize illegal activities such as drug dealing we are contributing to a problem. I understand we are discussing how individuals in urban environments look towards drug dealing to make a living and how they must have a work ethic, but I feel conversations like these sometimes ignore how the glorification of these activities have led to the destruction of communities as well as making it seem the majority of individuals in urban environments resort to drugs, which is not necessarily true.
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When you ask why can’t street skills be translated into the legal business world the one obvious answer that comes to my mind is violence. If people know that you are violent, and are willing to kill over the smallest thing you are awarded with more success. This is what Marlo and Barksdale both understood about the game that Stringer Bell did not fully grasp. In the legal business world the consequences of screwing someone over or stepping in someone else’s territory my result in a loss of money but hardly ever in the loss of someone’s life.
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Another reason that the skills of the street are not valued as skills of the regular workplace is that these two worlds are mutually exclusive. At least in terms of the people involved, there is very little overlap. Those who work in the drug trade stay on the street, while those who get legitimate jobs do not. Once you start in the drug trade, you either die or end up imprisoned. There is no easy exit strategy to move on to legitimate employment. Compounding this issue is the fact that so many in the street have dropped out of school.
When Cutty gets out of prison and begins to work in landscaping while simultaneously becoming associated again with the violent drug world, he is caught at a crossroads. He quickly finds that the people in a “legitimate” job do not overlap with the relationships he formed on the street. After so many years in prison, all of his connections in life are criminals. He has to get to know people in the legitimate world, but we see how far he has drifted from his teacher and old love interest. Cutty has to reintroduce himself to world in order to find legitimate work.
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Jacqueline, you provide excellent points about employment and the code of the workplace. Kiley also raises some similar questions. Yet, while good workers might be “keyed in to the code of the workplace” how can policy makers help to curb joblessness among drug dealers and other violent characters within “the game”? Is there some job training or intervention that might help the aforementioned demographics to realize the discrepancy between their actions and qualities desired in the legal workplace? In my estimation, Cutty is a character that seems to make the adjustment that ultimately makes him “hirable” in the legal working world. While he demonstrates some characteristics of the street in running his boxing gym, he also demonstrates a professionalism that is uncharacteristic his former drug association. These professional qualities also help him to secure a job with the school.
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I found Benzie’s story to be interesting yet very similar to characters in the Wire. It was not until he fully immersed himself in the drug business and street culture that he became sober. When holding a legal job as a janitor he was using crack, however when he became a crack dealer he stopped using the drug. In the Wire, we also see those selling drugs not on drugs. I am reminded of Bodie, Poot, Stinger, and Barksdale. None of these characters did drugs; they just sold and managed them. In D’Angelo’s case, specifically, when on the streets and running the low rises he was not on drugs. It was only when he went to jail that he began using. Don’t we see the same thing happen with Ziggy in season 2 (correct me if I’m wrong)? Is there a correlation between drug dealing /the drug business and sobriety?
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Erin this is a really interesting point. At first glance it seems a little strange that the drug dealers that stop selling begin using the drugs. However, I think this correlation may exist for a reason. As the dealers are still selling the drugs their main motivation is money. If they began using, they would be destroying potential to gain more money. Additionally, the dealers would not be able to effectively manage their business if they were high on drugs all the time. This may not be an exact analogy but the first parallel that comes to mind is a bartender/bar owner that doesn’t drink while on the job.
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This is also something that I had not really thought about until reading this article. Throughout The Wire, one will notice that the most “successful” men dealing on the street are those that are not consumed in using drugs, such as Stringer, Avon, Prop Joe, and Omar. All of these characters are well educated on the work that they do and often have to come up with complex solutions for important and life threatening problems. For example, Stringer goes to school and takes an Economics course in order to learn how to make the most money and do business the right way. These men are also dissuaded to use drugs because of their influence over the gang and for their reputation as a competent leader. Stringer, Avon, and Prop Joe organize their men and hire people to deal with the packages, so they often aren’t even physically near the drugs. These men are the brains and if they were to do drugs their organizations would undoubtedly fall apart. As mentioned in many articles, respect must be gained before a person rises in the drug business and if a main dealer was using, this would most likely limit the amount of respect they received.
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This article made me realize that many drug managers did not do drugs or even test them for quality control. They distributed free sampels of the day’s batch to junkies by throwing them in grass. The junkies tirelessly searched for the viles like dogs looking for hidden treats. If the drug dealers were strung out on drugs, there is no way they would be able to handle their responsibilities. Junkies would be able to test their authority. A high drug dealer would make himself very vulnerable to those in and out of the game (police officers). If drug dealers were high, the acceptance of Bubbles’ imitation money would be much more frequent.
I think it is very interesting that Benzie stopped using drugs when he started selling drugs full-time. Maybe because the dealing routine required much more careful attention and planning than required by his janitorial responsibilities. I also think that he needed to be sober because he was surrounded by sober drug dealers for a longer period of time and they would not tolerate a messy dealer. I think for the good of the corporation and his own personal safety, it is best that he stopped using.
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In The Wire, I recall a few scenes where the drug dealers on the street refer to the people buying their drugs for them as “junkies”. In most businesses there is a saying that “the customer is always right”, which is to imply that a business needs to treat its customers well in order for them to come back. Because drugs like heroin and crack are so addictive many drug users will deal with a lot of crap in order to acquire the drugs they are addicted to. This seems to allow the dealers in The Wire to treat their customers poorly, and view them as lesser human beings. Perhaps avoiding this stigma of being a “junkie” is the reason many dealers don’t use drugs themselves.
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Although I think addictiveness of the drugs is a big reason the dealers are able to treat them poorly, I think the lack of competition plays a larger role. Addicts are fairly restricted based on geography. When Avon’s crew holds all the high rises, it isn’t feasible for an addict to head to the east side of town for a different product. This point is clearly illustrated in Hamsterdam. Suddenly, there were numerous dealers all in one place and were actually selling the product to the customers rather than waiting for the customer to come to them. Customers suddenly now have the bargaining power because of the increase in supply.
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This comment was interesting to me because it goes well with Wallace’s situation as well. When he is no longer able to stay in the game, he turns to drugs as a coping mechanism. It wasn’t until he left the game that he became an addict, spending each day at home to stay high instead of going back to work in the pit.
I agree with what Spencer had to say about why the dealers don’t use the drugs. It reminds me of the saying “don’t mix business with pleasure.” If they were all using the drugs and were addicted to them too, they would not be efficient, not be able to defend their territory and not be able to run the operation they do. It would also make them more likely to steal the drugs while on the job, so it’s in the drug bosses best interest to not let this happen. I think there are a lot of things that explain why it is like this, but I think it is most helpful to think of their work just like a regular job, one in which you can’t do things that would stop the “company” from making money and being successful or your fired. It is a lot like this in the game as well.
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I think this is very intriguing, as it seems to be very true across the board. I like the comparison to bartenders not drinking on the job. What The Wire did not show was these characters’ upbringings. I find it very hard to believe that all of these people were not drug users at some point in their childhood. To get into the drug business, you have to understand the produt and its effects on people, and growing up in the streets its hard to avoid drug use. So I imagine Stringer, Avon, Omar etc… all grew up off and on drugs, but were able to kick their addictions because they got addicted to money, and were smart enough to control their drug use. A character like Bubbles coudl never run an operation because he is always trying to get high, but he is intelligent, and I think if he were clean, he would be smart enough and to find himself in a role similar to Bodie or mid level dealers.
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The parts of this chapter that I found most interesting were ones in which the author shows the similarities between the structure of legitimate, mainstream society versus that of members of deviant cultures and subcultures. From this paragraph, for example, we learn that the spending patterns of “upwardly mobile persons in the legal economy” are not so different from the habits of drug dealers.
While these findings do not particularly surprise me, I do wonder how other people would react to them. I’d bet that your average member of middle class society would not appreciate this comparison. The media try to make criminals, deviants, and the like seem so different from the “norm.” As we’ve discussed in class before, when we read about drug busts, murders, rape, etc., these stories often come to us in very black and white images and texts that deem the offender inherently bad, perhaps even evil. While these actions are not praiseworthy by any means, we seldom get a sense of why they committed these crimes, making it seem like these people simply do bad for the sake of it. So, to read here in “In Search of Respect” that these people are, in some ways, like us, is a pretty bold statement that would likely make members of “legitimate” society a little uncomfortable, to say the least.
Also, I would say that the creators of The Wire go to great lengths to impress this very point upon their audiences, that Bodie and his gang are simply trying to make a living and get by, which is what most people do, regardless of their background, location, or profession.
In your opinion, though, in watching The Wire and taking into account class discussions and materials, are there other similarities you see between “our” culture and street culture that this chapter did not address? At a closer look, are these people actually more similar to us than they are different from us? Does that matter, and if so, to whom?
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The United States and its capitalist economy directly correlates with the underground market of drug dealing. The spending habits of drug addicts match with the spending habits of middle class consumers. The main difference between the two is the legality of addictions such as shopping, and the consumption of consumer goods. I believe that the connection between the nature of drug addicts and American consumers would create a highly unpopular response from middle class society. We are conditioned to think that the habits and addictions of middle class consumers are not bad because they are legal. The Wire exposes the contradictory nature of various institutions by showing their similarities to the drug game. Although the institutions are named differently, many of the players play the same games.
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Maybe I am uncomfortable with the comparison but I think Bourgois’s comment here is disregarding a lot of implications of the two somewhat different situations. I agree with Bourgois that the public has become obsessed with individualistic consumptions with somewhat easily earned money. However, I think he is generalizing too many crucial aspects of this argument. First, he is comparing general overconsumption with addiction. If someone is addicted to shopping, then it may be fair to compare that person with a drug addict, however, an overconsumption does not mean that people will work to purely satisfy their craving or destructive needs. In addition, there’s a health issue that is chemically bound with drug addiction unlike a social phenomena. So I agree with this statement to a certain respect in regards to the idea that the world creates this perpetual/inevitable consumer based society regardless of economic standing, but directly correlating binge drug-usage and overall overconsumption of the public may have been a long shot…
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The dealers are paid on a piece-rate commission basis. I would like to know more about the pay rate for these dealers. Under Ray’s management, the Game Room started to sell each vile for $5 a piece to be more competitive with the two teenage teams that would sell viles in stairwells. Correct me if I am wrong but the dealers employed by Ray were also partially paid in goods, viles. Would dealers be upset by being paid in viles? If they are sober, what good are viles if they need cash immediately. I think dealers can just sell more viles but they would be disappointed that their payment required them to undertake more product to sell so they could eat and financially support themselves.
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After reading this paragraph I think back to The Wire and how we do not often see inside the production world of the Barksdale’s drug ring. The show certainly details how dangerous the inner city is, and how the dealers are likely to be shot, imprisoned, etc., but from my recollection we do not get much time watching the physical working conditions. Is there a reason for this? Is Simon aiming to show mainly the social interactions that occur in the drug distribution? The description of crackhouses made here by Bourgois is new and different to me.
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Even though I read this article pretty thoroughly yesterday, I hadn’t thought of this point until reading your question.
And while I think that it is okay that viewers of Simon’s show don’t get a real look inside the actual production of Barksdale’s ring, I definitely think including that could have made the show more interesting and added another dimension to it. From what I saw of Barksdale and his people, though, I automatically concluded that the physical workspace couldn’t have been enjoyable, but I do wish we had had more time to see this for ourselves.
Also, though I doubt this is the case, Simon’s choice not to show much of this could be because doing so would make us less sympathetic with characters (like what we talked about last week with the absence of rape). Were we to explicitly see more of the physical conditions, we might be so turned off by what a certain character does there (ie how he/she treats others) that we lose empathy, sympathy, or interest in that character altogether.
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I think Simon’s choice was more a decision of what was plausible and important to include, rather than an issue of oversight, though I found Susan’s point about viewers being less sympathetic of the characters to be an interesting one. Showing these back-room scenes could have added more depth to the drug-dealing institution, however.
We talk often about the war on drugs being an extension of jim crow laws, and about the American incarceration system being (perhaps drastically stated) an extension of slavery, but what, then, are the crack houses, the production facilities? They appear to be little more than the American equivalent of sweat shops to create a far more harmful product; in what way are these organizations (largely with black Americans as the bosses (dare I say, owners?) of other black Americans) much different than sweat shops, prison work, or, if you’re feeling dramatic, slavery? There is more to the Barksdale organization than meets the eye through the wire, and though this may diminish the sympathy we feel for these characters, would it be a more accurate portrayal of the world in which the characters of The Wire live?
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Here, Benzie references the union of his former employment, and goes on to mention the “membership shit” of yacht owners. In my mind, this draws parallels to several things. The first is the beginning of the article when Philippe discusses how the bonds of these men are often that of kin. The second are the same references to kinship within gangs that we see in The Wire. Gangs have allegiances, kinship—- biologically, or otherwise. Season Two of The Wire also shows us the stevedore union, which much like drug crews, operates under its own “membership shit.” There are arrays of relationships at work here: relationships of family members, coworkers, neighbors, and politics.
Are there ties that make some of these memberships, and subsequent benefits, stronger and more enticing than others? Does the Barksdale crew promote more fidelity since many of them are of blood relation? In what ways do workers unions, like the one Benzie has been a part of, resemble gangs?
What made it so easy for Benzie to drop a job and “benefits” for a different line of work and “benefits?” Is drug addiction the sole reason, or are there also social aspects? I think the this article and The Wire also show that demographics stick with their own demographics to feel comfortable in membership of a group.
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Hey Paige, first of all to cover the reply comment requirements: I think your insights are wonderful and we are privileged to have you in our class.
I guess it’s the idea of a bond formed over a shared challenging experience. So when a group goes through something traumatic, challenging, etc. together, the bond formed is much stronger than a forced one, like that whose sole membership criteria are fees.
So the boys from the shipyard are willing to go down in flames for the sake of standing up for their dead Union president because their bond goes well beyond the money they have to pay every month to maintain their status as an IBS member.
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Paige, the question you pose about membership strength and connectedness is an enticing one. When considering the strength of the Barksdale organization and that of the stevedores union, I would say that – as a whole – the Barksdale organization has a stronger, more cohesive membership. In my opinion, such strong membership stems from blood relation, as mentioned by Paige, as well as the illegal nature of the activity in which the Barksdales participate. The blood relation aspect is more understandable in its ability to strengthen membership ties within a group. If a group is involved in an illegal activity, on the other hand, the members of that group have a greater incentive to stick together and keep their mouths shut. If one person is caught amid illegal activity, it jeopardizes the other members of the group. Thus, such confidentiality only strengthens the bonds that members of the group have to one another.
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I do not think it is fair how Primo blames everything in his life that is wrong based on the fact that he is in a illegitimate business. I would argue that even if he was to earn a legitimate wage, he could still fall into the same bad habits and surround himself by the wrong crowd of bad influences. Obviously being in the game puts him in a more vulnerable place to succomb to the negative influences such as the drugs and alcohol. But there are certainly a lot of people who work legitimate jobs that still embark on self-destructive habits. I don’t think it is fair for people like Primo to blame their mistakes on their life circumstance. Primo should be looking in the mirror and make better decisions rather than blame external forces and others.
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I think it’s so interesting to hear Primo lament about his working conditions and how difficult it was to maintain order and discipline in such a shitty environment. It’s sad really. Primo clearly had ambitions to be better and improve himself, but it seemed he reached a certain glass-cieling. Benzo on the other hand obtained a legal job, but was unable to shake his substance abuse completely. It was clear that
Primo wanted a better life, a better work environment, but it seemed impossible for him to break out of this lifestyle. I think it really shows the importance of institutions and how they play on each level of society. Primo believes that working legally will change his destiny, but I think he doesn’t realize that even Benzo can’t seem to shake his substance abuse problems. I think it truly wears on Primo to be constantly living and working in filth, but there’s a certain element of self-disciplince and selfconfidence that Primo believies that comes with legal work.
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This is an interesting depiction of “The American Dream”. Primo has this idea in his head that working legally would fix all of his problems because of the environment he would be in and the different people he would be surrounded by. He sees this legal dream as eating meals with coworkers, going home and then having to wake up and do it all again. However in tying to enter this world, it is evident that he does not fit in and he once again turns to the street. Do you think Primo’s reliance on food stamps and drug money instead of continuing trying to find legal work make him lazy and undeserving, or do you think he is a product of sub-systems and institutions at work?
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I think you raise good questions. When examining someone like Primo, it is easy to say that he is lazy, undeserving, etc., if we do not look at the institutions that have helped shaped his life. I think “The Wire” does a good job of showing individuals trying to change their lives, but circumstances not working in their favor, i.e. Duqui not being able to gain employment. Individuals do share in responsibility of their circumstances, but we cannot ignore larger institutions that play a role in someone’s life like Primo
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Jacqueline, I think you bring up very important points and these questions you ask, as Allen claims, are presented frequently in The Wire. The questions you pose reminded me of the article we read which highlights a poll taken by Americans, where a vast majority of individuals believe that individuals efforts are what determine the fate of their employment. I believe many people believe this because of the “individualist” culture that America has and the belief in upward mobility. As we have seen in The Wire, the “American Dream” as we have been taught to understand it, does not play out the same way for all races and social classes. The environment in which a person grows up and the economic situation and institutions surrounding it need to be taken into account when analyzing Primo’s struggle to enter and maintain legal employment.
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I think you’re right to a degree. Primo must look at his life and assess whether he will be better off working at a job in fast food, or at a convenience store probably not making much money and living on a modest wage or should he work in the crack house and make a lot of money. The institutions cause him to have to make this assessment, but it could be some kind of moral factor that guides him to choose differently and pick a less lucrative job that isn’t a part of the game. He does say that a legal job would be better for him, but it seems like the money and lifestyle keeps him this cycle and I do think he could get out if he made a different choice, like William Gant for example, that let him live a more modest and productive lifestyle.
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I think that Bourgois’s commentary on the legal job market was very interesting. Even if those working within the drug game have the intentions to move to a more legitimate legal career, several boundaries make this move unrealistic. Many entry-level jobs provide a salary that hardly covers the cost of living, and the position often are thankless, sometimes involving degrading or humiliating work. Legal jobs also require tax deductions, another negative aspect of moving towards a legitimate job. The loss of work that is highlighted in season two relates to these issues. While Nicky and Ziggy do work legitimate jobs, they are unable to make enough money to live a comfortable lifestyle. The instant, untaxed benefits of illegal markets are appealing to these types of individuals, but negative consequences like addiction, arrests or violence can lead to further entanglements within the illegal activities. Despite the fact that the drug world does not provide the resources for a decent lifestyle, individuals in the drug game get trapped within the illegal world. Exiting does not seem like an option due to the various issues involved with entry-level legal jobs, keeping these individuals tied to the illegal market. Is there any way to create more incentives for these individuals to shift into the legal market? How could some of the barriers to entry be resolved?
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The ease of entry into the drug game attract many who face large barriers of entry into the legal economy. The job shortage in American economy limits the opportunities for legal work, and leads people into illegal activity to earn money. People are faced with decisions and make their own choices. Many who choose to stay the straight and narrow path still receive the short end of the stick time and time again. Many Americans are left on the outside looking in as they attempt to earn an honest living. College institutions are supposed to position people in better opportunities for employment yet many underprivileged individuals cannot afford to pay for an education. Most American Institutions are tailored to middle class society leaving the lower class behind. The result is high crime rate and drug issues in lower class environments.
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I think what’s also important to add to what you’re saying is that even if underprivileged people do manage to reach college, that doesn’t guarantee them anything. People often assume that having access to a college education automatically removes any other barriers to success someone might encounter, which is obviously not true. Even if an underprivileged individual figures out how to raise the money and visibility for themselves to gain entry to a collegiate institution, they haven’t automatically found a leg up; they still have an upward battle to face against students who have grown up with more advantages and therefore are better prepared for the environment and against teachers who may or may not have their own biases. Knowing this, it is even more understandable why when faced with the option of fighting hard to get into college and then continuing to fight hard to get through it and graduate or the easy entry and possibility for advancement through the drug trade, many individuals will opt for the latter.
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As we have discussed on a number of different occasions, the disadvantaged members of society are often the victim of a circularity problem. Many of the youth in disadvantaged poor neighborhoods attend bad public schools with little resources and lots of outside distractions. Harvard, among other elite colleges, initiated a movement to pay for students’ full tuition if their families earned less than $60,000. Even after the initiative- Harvard’s freshman class marginally increased by the number of disadvantaged students. I think the problem is that the students don’t have access to the correct resources that help guide them to attend top colleges. Also, there is a clear correlation between family income and SAT scores.
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I agree with O’Shea that education is an imperative part of upward social mobility. However, I think it is as equally important for a society to take care of the low-skilled workforce with a good working condition. Not everyone in the society can or will go to college and become a white collared worker. The society needs blue collared workers as much as the white collared workers, and everyone has different perspectives and goals in life, so I think everyone’s work needs to be respected regardless of how much they are getting paid for. That being said, I think the fundamental problem that Primo and his lookout, Willie, bring up is the horrible working conditions of these workplaces and the lack of respect that people in the low-skilled workforce get. Getting paid six dollars an hour while processing dead animals is a horrifying job and in someways very inhumane for the person who has to do the work.
Primo later describes how his life is threatened every night from being a lookout at Ray’s Game Room. But he would rather be a lookout than work at a legal place. His choice reflects how horrible the working condition (whether it be physically intense or mentally stressful) is for a low-wage worker, because he obviously chose to be on the street even though he doesn’t even make nearly as much money being a low-wage worker. So I think one of the ways to approach this problem is to protect the rights of low-skilled workers and improve their working conditions, so they can realistically stay and want to stay at their workplace instead of trickling down to the streets.
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In the traditional, legal workplace setting, emotions are to be suppressed. Personal problems are best left at home in order to maintain an air of professionalism. A boss should not treat an employee differently based on personal feelings. Coworkers are encouraged to hide their negative feelings towards each other while at work.
In the drug-dealing work environment, emotions seem to play a completely different role. Fear is used as a weapon, and vulnerabilities are opportunities for manipulation in the name of profit. Ray plays on Tony and Primo’s strained relationship to increase his own personal profits. In The Wire, Brianna uses emotional reasoning to convince D’Angelo not to leave the drug-dealing life behind by participating with the authorities.
Perhaps it is the prohibition of the expression on emotions in the traditional workplace that makes it harder for those like Benzie to work in the traditional workplace — especially when they come from an environment that more or less allows even over-the-top expressions of emotion and the manipulation of others’ emotions. Of course, that is not the only reason why Benzie failed to keep a steady, legal job. But it may be a contributing factor that makes working in traditional settings more difficult; they are not accustomed to negotiating their conditions of pay, resolving personal disputes with coworkers/bosses, etc without the play of emotion.
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This is quite a damning statement on inner-city police departments. I’m not saying I disagree with it, just that it’s a pretty profound condemnation if you think about it. If the group in charge of keeping law and order – the police – cannot stop drug dealing from occurring, who can? The FBI, as we’ve seen in The Wire, doesn’t have the resources nor the inclination to prioritize drugs. Even if it did, enforcement efforts have not been particularly effective at curbing drug use or drug distribution.
I think this detailed ethnography as a whole is another in a large (and continuously growing) mountain of evidence that the War on Drugs is an abject failure of public policy and that an alternative approach is needed [my opinion is controlled decriminalization and legalization but that is another debate]. For such a complex operation to exist for so long and only face arrest twice, it is clear that enforcement is not effective (nor a deterrent).
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What Bourgois says here implies that the police do not care enough about the communities in which they work. This is an interesting statement when we consider that McNulty is often labeled as “caring too much.” Do you think this is a flaw? If so, how can police strike a balance between being acceptably removed from their constituents while remaining invested in their general well-being. Is there any character in the Wire who embodies this balance?
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After our discussion last week about the very small role women play in The Wire, I thought it was especially noticeable how often women are discussed in this article. Women were an integral part of the Game Room as well as the overall social structure described in this article. Blood-related kinship ensured loyalty within the system and women provided a way of expanding this network of familial bonds. In this article, women are neglected, mistreated, and used as a means for personal success and happiness. This makes it difficult to support or sympathize with any of the male characters. Surely there are similar characters in the East Baltimore setting that are not portrayed in The Wire. Could that be why women are mostly omitted from The Wire? To guide the positive opinions of characters we have all expressed throughout our discussions?
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