In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio

In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio is a critically-acclaimed work of nonfiction by Philippe Bourgois, first published in 1995. It won the 1996 C. Wright Mills Award and the 1997 Margaret Mead Award. A second edition, with a prologue and an additional epilogue, was released in 2003. The book explores themes of respect, independence, autocracy, self-worth, racism, and social marginalization. Bourgois is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He has also authored Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation, which includes extensive fieldwork he conducted in Central America on ethnicity and social unrest. Bourgois published a book with photographer Jeffrey Schonberg in 2009 about homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco.

As an ethnographic study, In Search of Respect details the effects of racism and social marginalization on people involved in the underground economy in East Harlem. Bourgois wanted to research the underground economy and drug use, so he moved his family to El Barrio, the East Harlem neighborhood that takes center stage in his narrative. Through extensive research, and after first successfully entering the world of crack dealing, Bourgois befriends various drug dealers and tells their stories. His hope in the narrative is that the microcosm of East Harlem can paint a broader picture of what he calls "apartheid in the United States" (19). In other words, he wants to show how "institutionalized racism" (145) and "social marginalization" (12) are overbearing factors that lead to poverty, drug use and drug selling, and a cycle of violence.

One of Bourgois’s first major issues was tackling preconceived notions based on race and class. Being white, he was often considered to be an undercover narcotics officer. This obviously didn’t bode well for a man whose intent was to infiltrate the street-dealing crack world of East Harlem. Bourgois eventually manages to gain the trust of drug dealers who have since become longtime friends. Ever careful not to cross personal lines that might jeopardize his authority with his subject matter, Bourgois becomes friends with people like Ray, Caesar, Primo, and Candy. He listens to these individuals as they struggle for respect in an underground economy and as they dabble in the legal economy without success. Their stories, though reflective of East Harlem, are indicative of poverty and institutionalized constraints that the poor the world over face on a daily basis.

Through Bourgois’s first major mistake in this often-unforgiving landscape—he “disses” (22) the drug dealer Ray in front of his friends, thus compromising Ray’s street cred—he introduces the concept of "street culture" (8). Street culture dictates much of what the individuals in Bourgois’s narrative believe. By dissing Ray, Bourgois touches on the central subject of his narrative: respect. In the Puerto Rican culture of those he befriends—also known as Nuyoricans, which are second-generation, New-York born Puerto Ricans—respect is one of the most important things to develop and sustain. Moreover, vulnerability is shunned and is something that can get one killed. Bourgois had to learn these "street smarts" (19) to be successful in his interactions. On a larger level, his mistake shows how these street smarts are something that those in East Harlem must learn at an early age to survive among their peers.

One of the most consistent statements in Bourgois’s narrative is the idea that drugs and poverty are not the root of the problem for those in El Barrio and other inner cities, even though government policies treat the issue as such. More important to Bourgois is the legal economy and white, middle-class American values that spread institutionalized racism and marginalization. These issues are the root of the problem in that they cause violence, doubt, a loss of self-respect, and, as an outcome, create and maintain drug use in marginalized minority communities. Bourgois’s narrative details the ordeals of those caught in the struggle between the legal and underground economy, and then suggests ways that mainstream society might alleviate long-held prejudices that produce violent, drug-using cultures. Bourgois is quick to note that there is no easy solution to the prevailing problems of racism and marginalization. His narrative, however, hopes to humanize those who have long been dehumanized and demonized, and hopes to show how political policy must change if inner cities are to also have access to the American Dream.