In Search of Respect - Essay Example

In search of respect Respect is a vital human characteristic that we all strive to acquire from our peers, neighbors, workmates, and family members, which prompts individuals towards sustaining it by any means. Being a value, it is man’s greatest common denominator, often neglected, despised, withheld and manipulated. It still remains one of the most powerful human concepts in the world. Being a second generation Puerto Rican living in East Harlem, the United States of America is in itself a hard knock life. This is exacerbated by the fact that in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, racial profiling was cut across the African American and Latino communities and encouraged by the prevailing legal systems. This situation led to the internalization of the Latino community, that demoralizing, impoverishing and inferiority structures cast upon them by the American social, political and economic systems, consequently blaming themselves and not these systems for their poverty. In his book titled “In Search of Respect”, author Philippe Bourgois details his experiences when residing in East Harlem, a region defined by racial inequality. This has led to the embodiment of a “street culture of resistance” phrase that uses the peddling of drugs as a lucrative, yet self-deteriorating means of acquiring income and the much publicized and certainly pseudo elusive respect so much desired. The culture of poverty and the street are wrongly cast upon to the families of East Harlem, in that it focuses on the secondary effect, which is self–deteriorating upshots, rather than the structural forces that these Latino communities have to combat every day that make them practice what they do. In unconscious intellectual disciplines, the phrase “culture of” becomes a code for race or stereotypical excuse projections that are quite useless for understanding how things materialize in various communities. This makes the “culture of the street” quite a dangerous phrase even though anthropologists that it is one of the physiognomies that set us apart from animals. Rather than that, it would be much more subtle to use the phrase “risk environment” to help understand how poverty articulates more specifically and precisely with substandard educational institutions, infrastructure, and inaccessibility to decent food, sanitary food sources, decent employment and the public sector services that most middle–class clusters take for granted. Philippe Bourgois, while performing his research, had to develop a respectable rapport in order to try and understand the functionality of this risk environment in East Harlem by the second generation Puerto Rican community living here. He admits that aspects of negative ethnicity and racial profiling evident at the time made him intimidated towards the thought of moving into the neighborhood. Having undergone intense apartheid treatment by the social and legal structural systems of the country, the Latino community may have segregated themselves into the East Harlem area. Welcoming other races could prove to be difficult, or so it seems to the outside world of this community. However, Philippe managed to normalize this conundrum by bringing his wife over to settle down, where they eventually had a child. This hugely contributed to the normalization of the wrongly previously perceived situation. Having a child and having the children in El Barrio be the first to open up to the author brought about a different concept. The American social and economic structures actually worked to cordon off non-Caucasian communities from having access to basic amenities plus decent, mostly white collar, employment, health care and business ventures. The surge of hard drug peddling was at its peak in African American and Latino communities in the 80s. There was a ubiquitous increase in the use of crack cocaine and cases of marijuana by these ethnic communities, believed to be exacerbated by lack of decent employment, or any type of employment at that matter. Crack is a cheaper derivative of the traditional cocaine. Its availability and affordability, and the fact that it can be smoked rather than snorted or injected, makes it more appealing to consumers (Bourgois, 2003). What may have seemed to be a part time recreational activity led to deep addiction and consequently, interpersonal violence. As Philippe’s wife came to visually experience. This is one of the situation perceived to have brought about the “culture of the street” ideology by middle class individuals, groups, financial institutions and legal frameworks. But as the author came to realize, children belonging to parents in the neighborhood were first to welcome him. These same children, whose parents have to etch out a living to support to at least give them a chance of moving out of East Harlem to start families in other areas, where racial profiling would not determine the course that their careers and lives would take. This was, and still is, because children perhaps do not experience the same rigid structures of mild to extreme racism as the adults and most of their parents do. Thus comes the story of Primo and Caesar, the novel’s main characters and residents of East Harlem. The two Latino men found it really difficult a task to acquire jobs, let alone a decent occupation. With the surge of crack cocaine as the cool drug at the time, they were left no choice but to engage in drug dealing. Not that they were “bad” people, but only because they had to look for any sustainable means of getting to support themselves. Dealing drugs within the community may have hurt them more, as it represented them as some type of traitors by contributing to the deterioration of families that they knew so very well. The fact that Latinos were known to be deeply family oriented would not help with their case. The older Latino generation remains hooked on to cocaine due to old ethnic patterns, and the far more destructive heroin being sold to the youthful generation. Selling these hard drugs to teenagers and introducing them to even younger children behind the area’s arcade center did not help with the “survive by any means” case of the crack dealers, the infamous Game Room. This proves to destroy the community’s moral compass straight from teen-hood to adulthood. Ethnically thinking, crack cocaine did not get the negative reputation among the poor Caucasians as being destructive or widespread as it did among the Latino neighborhoods. This begs to bring about the question to the drug dealers of the neighborhood, when does personal responsibility end, and structural responsibility begin? Philippe aimed at singling out the partakers in the peddling industry. He did this even after claiming that most of the residents of the East Harlem Latino residents had and have nothing to do with the encouragement of drug peddling and use. “…most El Barrios’ residents have nothing to do with drugs” (Bourgois, 2003). He justified his double edged approach by claiming that the law abiding citizens of the area had lost control of the public space, leaving the dealers and peddlers to dictate the tone that would govern the residents’ public life. As Primo and Caesar came to realize, the availability and ease of dealing crack mobilized a new economy, which was hidden from the rest of society thus providing dealers with not only large portions of easy income, but also a new platform to gain admiration and the much publicized respect among their peers. This was not the situation with the non-Latino community living away from El Barrio. Racial profiling which led to disrespect led to the need for attaining respect in ways not socially recognizable by the morally rooted community. A situation instilled in the minds of the Puerto Rican community as early as nursery school. Gender discrimination is also brought about as a factor that leads to the search of respect among peers by any means, right in these nursery school situations. Most of the children in East Harlem are raised by single mothers, who are mostly only Spanish speakers due to the illiteracy brought about by inadequate education institutions and structure. As is worldly known, single mothers are children’s pillars of life and motivation. When called upon to school by the educational administration to either discuss their child’s potential and progress, the fact that they are non-English speakers provides an opportunity for ridicule by the nursery teachers. All this is witnessed by the children who may begin to lose confidence, and ultimately the respect that they give to their mothers. The public school system from an early age straight to high school and some instances college, if the Latino community’s children make it that far is viewed to marginalize all immigrants from Spanish speaking South American countries. Racial profiling, according to Philippe (Bourgois, 2003), is such a strong physiological force, that it much more powerful at determining the children’s future outlook than all the efforts that the single mothers try to push forward. These efforts include negative and positive criticism, softer approaches such as caresses and if it would come to a final resort, beatings, which traditionally proved effective. The consequential effect of losing faith in their mothers from seeing the disrespect they go through from kindergarten, and learning that there were situations such as complete functional families from Caucasian children contributed to the regarding of females as less significant by the growing male Latino community. This is exemplified by the beating of the girlfriends by many crack dealers in not only the East Harlem area, but also many Puerto Rican communities experiencing marginalization straight from kindergarten. Heeding of their mothers’ advice would become redundant, in the pursuit of respect and admiration. This is exacerbated by the fact that one of the crack dealers, Ray, makes millions per year from this illegal “economical” activity. Being an illiterate crack dealer did not help the case, as Ray’s peers and workers idolized him and his progress. Many of these, who so much desperately seek admiration and respect by their peers, abandon all forms of conventional institutionalized activities by the social and economic system, to become even remotely akin to Ray and his self-made status in the community. Despite the systematic alienation from mainstream society, many of the interviewed expressed desire to “go legit” or hold a legal job out of the crack business but failed and found refuge in the crack industry (Bourgois, 2003). This situation forces the rest of the non-Latinos to view the El Barrios residents as “insubordinate drug addicts”. Philippe Bourgois comes out to show that the residents of the East Harlem Puerto Rican community do not intentionally choose the life of crack dealing. Rather, the life sort of chose them. He also comes out to display that selling of crack cocaine does is not the ultimate reason of engaging in this illegal trade, but rather, a tool used to assist in the gaining of respect among their peers. Many fall off the wagon as the temptation of experiencing the effects of the drugs by themselves overwhelms their drive to be as successful and admired as Ray. This is proved by the fact that during many of Bourgois’ interviews, the crack dealers, like Primo, where heavily intoxicated, reducing their efficiency to organize their lives. In another interview involving Barbara Miller from The George Washington University and Bourgois, he was asked whether he had also been tempted to try out the hard drugs himself. He admits that he probably could have, but the fact of his workaholic status in a way saved him. Also admitting that taking two beers or less to help him relax most nights prevented him from getting drunk to a stupor. This kept him remain clean, both personally and externally as acclaimed by his neighbors. This brought him respect among many of El Barrios’ residents, quite easily and not surprisingly, due to his great family orientation. Many of the upcoming wannabe crack dealers lacked the discipline to either be as clean and orderly as Bourgois or as meticulous as Ray. Since they did not have meaningful employment or no employment at all to keep them busy enough to stay off the drugs, many succumbed to its drastic effects, where they are marginalized by the Caucasian community as being insubordinate drug addicts. This only makes serves to make it much more difficult for them to attain any kind of employment that would bring them the income and respect that they chase after. Bourgois comes out to defend the Puerto Ricans of East Harlem by saying that if anyone really, was born in El Barrios in the 80s, they would most likely than not be doing or selling crack and not forgetting that they would be in prison as a result of the previous two situations. He goes on by claiming that, “You’ve got to be realistic about how the larger structural forces in risk environments affect people. A person in such a situation can strive to be different, but it’s hard to overcome the context. Those of us who care about giving inner city poor a fair chance at life have to work upstream, at changing the structural forces.” Bourgeois thus accomplishes and satisfies in civilizing the many of his interviewees without blatantly lionizing the life of a crack dealer and user, as gangster or destitute. This fortifies the fact that respect within a close knit society is one of the strongest physical and psychological forces that drives human beings subjected to marginalization, racial profiling and antagonized cultural norms. Read More