Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in In Search of Respect, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Anthropological Research and its Consequences
The Crack Trade and the Underground Economy
Poverty, History, and Public Policy
Street Culture and Drug Use
Gender Roles and Family Violence
Summary
Analysis
Bourgois starts with a quote from Felix, who felt important and respected when running the Game Room, but then reveals that the crack trade is like “any other risky private sector retail enterprise,” and would be “overwhelmingly routine and tedious” if it did not include a sense of danger.
In an attempt to dispel the common assumption that the crack trade is opposite the formal economy (unstable, hugely profitable, and theatrically dangerous), Bourgois begins by showing that it is simply another job, with dangers that do not affect the formula for success: consistent sales.
Themes
In the section “Living with Crack,” Bourgois explains the Game Room’s origins: Felix, Primo’s cousin and Ray’s old friend, originally founded it but ran it badly—he “did not insulate himself from the police” and spent most of his time sleeping with teenage addicts, to the chagrin of his wife Candy.
Felix’s error seems to have been assuming that the crack trade would be as glamorous as it is often depicted to be, and he is therefore running an ineffective business. In contrast, Ray—while he still has sex with teenagers and uses violence to sustain his business—focuses on the bottom line rather than the status and glory his business wins him.
Themes
Primo buys his supply at the Game Room in those days, after leaving his job, wife, and child to move back in with his mother and start mugging people to fund his habit. He tells Bourgois about robbing and threatening to kill a drunk Mexican man in his aunt’s apartment building. (Caesar, who is addicted at the time of Bourgois’s research, interrupts to comment on how much he loves crack).
Primo’s trajectory is typical—or, arguably, stereotypical—of those who became involved in the crack trade at the beginning of the epidemic. It shows how crack engenders violence, not because of the drug itself, but because of the economic desperation of its users.
Themes
One day, Candy discovers Felix sleeping with her sister, and the confrontation leads to him hurting his ankle, either from jumping off a staircase landing or from a knife Candy throws at him. He enlists Primo to help manage the crackhouse, and ironically working there is what gets Primo to quit crack. Some time later, Candy shoots Felix (also for sleeping with her sister) and he goes to prison as soon as he gets out of the hospital. Candy sells the Game Room to Ray, who has just returned from prison.
Primo’s apparently contradictory path away from crack demonstrates that stable (though underground) work gave him something to focus on and strive for, which diverted him away from drugs. This supports Bourgois’s argument that drugs are symptom, rather than a cause, of poverty and a lack of opportunity. Candy’s troubled relationship with Felix points to El Barrio’s fraught gender dynamic, on which Bourgois focuses in the final three chapters of the book.
Themes
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In “Restructuring Management at the Game Room,” Bourgois explains what happens after Ray takes over the crackhouse and imposes his stricter rules, but leaves Primo in charge. “A brilliant labor relations manager,” Ray uses controlled violence and gestures of friendship to control his workers, most of whom are family (by blood, marriage, or “fictive kinship arrangement[s]” like being godparents to one another’s children or having those children with the same women). The Game Room’s profits soar after Ray takes control, both improves quality and cuts prices, and kicks out rival gangs who begin filtering into his block. He soon opens two more crackhouses.
Again, Ray’s success is based on business savvy that is specifically inflected through the norms and conditions of street culture. Whereas Felix wholly embodies the stereotype of the reckless, freewheeling crack dealer, Ray selectively invokes this same stereotype to run his business. His “labor relations” strategy is to carefully mete out carelessness. While his use of violence separates him from a conventional entrepreneur, his careful management of his underpaid employees and ruthless campaigns against his competition are common, tactics in mainstream American business.
Themes
Within a year, Primo is in the upper echelons of Ray’s business hierarchy: he gets “benefits” (protection if he gets arrested, gifts, and fancy dinners), but the people he hires as lookouts, like Caesar, get nothing but the pay he negotiates with them. Caesar’s predecessor Benzie disrespected too many people, so Primo fired him, but Primo does not trust Caesar either. And Primo himself often berates customers, especially African Americans and women.
Again, like any other business, the crack trade has a clear hierarchy, with Ray as the executive, Primo as middle management, and Caesar as the expendable, low-level worker. Ray has to look out for his workers to maintain loyalty, but only because Primo could theoretically turn against Ray. Caesar, who does not deal directly with Ray, poses no threat to him.
Themes
Under “Curbing Addiction and Channeling Violence,” Bourgois elaborates on Caesar’s unpredictable behavior whenever he goes on a crack binge—he steals and attacks people, but he and Primo remain close, perhaps “because [Primo] sympathized with Caesar’s crack addiction” (since Primo himself quit through stable work at the Game Room), or perhaps because he can pay Caesar (like the other addicts who work as lookouts) in crack instead of cash. Primo tries changing Caesar’s pay schedule to limit his drug usage, but Caesar mostly remains an effective employee, in part because of his penchant for violence. Caesar brags about nearly killing a man with a baseball bat, an episode Bourgois remembers vividly, and he gets social security money because he is “a certified nut case.”
Though Caesar’s crack addiction would threaten his ability to perform Primo's job, it makes him an excellent lookout. Like Ray’s carefully-managed reputation for violence, Caesar’s outbursts protect the business. The only drawback is that Caesar’s violence is random and authentically reflects his personality, while Ray’s is premeditated and primarily for show. Much like a lawyer’s reputation for ruthlessness might help them win clients and scare their competition, crack dealers’ reputation for violence makes potential robbers think twice. Caesar’s addiction and social security check also make him a less costly employee for Primo, and so he ironically hires the unstable Caesar because he is easier to take advantage of.
Themes
Unlike Caesar, during his time at the Game Room Benzie managed to quit crack, replacing it with powder cocaine and occasional heroin. And interestingly, Benzie had a legal job doing boat maintenance, which he quit to deal. Primo and Benzie reminisce about how much they used to make—at least $200 a night—and how they used to blow all of it on hotels and parties.
Benzie, Caesar’s predecessor, challenges the assumption that those involved in the crack trade cannot get legal employment. Rather, he deliberately chose the underground economy because it was a better alternative than his disappointing job in the mainstream economy. Dealers’ propensity to spend their earnings on drugs is another reason that poverty perpetuates itself in El Barrio.
Themes
In the section “Minimum Wage Crack Dealers,” Bourgois turns explicitly to “the mystery of why most street-level crack dealers remain penniless.” Like most people, they overspend when they earn a lot in a short period of time, and unlike most people, they have “limited options for spending [this] money constructively in the legal economy.” While they brag about their high pay, it is not so simple. They are paid based on what they sell, which on average comes out to a wage of $7-8 an hour (double the minimum in the 1980s). Sometimes they make much more, and they tend to remember the best nights at the expense of the average ones. One day, Bourgois looks through Primo’s wallet to figure out how much he is making and accidentally finds $15 worth of food stamps, which Primo says is from his mother “for emergencies.”
Bourgois’s analysis reveals an enduring contradiction in public perceptions about drug dealers: it is assumed that they deal drugs because they are impoverished, yet it is a supposedly lucrative trade. The dealers themselves seem to believe in this paradox. Bourgois shows the reality: firstly, even if the dealers had money, they could not break into the middle classes because of cultural barriers to finding better, legal work, and that. Secondly, although they occasionally receive large sums, these deals are few and far between when compared to the steady pay of conventional work. Curiously, this suggests that people like Benzie—who quit legal jobs to sell drugs—are not actually motivated by money, but by some combination of dignity, autonomy, and perceived status.
Themes
Besides dealing’s low wages, Bourgois continues, it is also horrible work: it is dangerous and the Game Room lacks heating and air conditioning, a bathroom and a telephone. People sit around on “grimy milk crates and bent aluminum schools” under an exposed light bulb, withstanding the “smell of urine and vomit.” Primo emphasizes that he hates it. Benzie regrets losing his old job doing maintenance at the yacht club after spending all night partying and all morning with a woman. Eventually, Benzie steals from Ray and ends up in jail, then starts working a minimum wage job when he gets out. He still does drugs on the weekends, during which he tells Primo how great it is to work legally and proclaims (while sniffing cocaine) that he “do[es] not do drugs.” For the first time, he says, he has self-respect.
When it is treated as just another job, drug dealing loses nearly all its glamor. Benzie reveals that becoming a drug lookout was only half a choice—it was also because keep a mainstream job was incompatible with his lifestyle. He eventually manages to balance the two, proclaiming the values of each to the other side. It is clear, though, that if he wants to become successful in either mainstream or street culture, he has to give up the other.
Themes
Primo also sometimes admits to Bourgois that he would “rather be legal,” making reliable money and looking forward to building wealth in the future. But people get into dealing for the opposite reason—Bourgois will cover this more in depth in the following chapter, but essentially, they see legal labor as degrading and inhumane. One lookout, Willie, recalls signing up for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—because he loves animals—and then learning that his job is to collect the corpses of euthanized animals in carts for garbage collection.
Ironically, while most outsiders might expect drug dealing to be the job that promises wealth but is morally compromising, this is actually how Bourgois’s subjects see the legal economy. Willie’s horrifying experience working at the animal shelter shows that Bourgois’s subjects really are forced into the worst imaginable jobs and questions the default logic that legal employment is always a good thing.
Themes
Under “Management-Labor Conflict at the Game Room,” Bourgois notes that Primo’s status as the crackhouse boss makes his own lack of legal opportunities less obvious to those working under and buying from him. However, when Ray begins investing heavily in his other business, the Social Club next to La Farmacia, he grows more demanding and begins cutting into Primo’s authority: Ray hires his own lookouts and lowers Primo’s per-piece salary. In response, Primo starts drinking and using drugs more often, and Ray starts working him part-time. (This is also a response to the further increased quality and decreased prices of the Game Room’s competitors.)
Primo’s success in the Underground Economy has no bearing on his chances in the mainstream one—there is no connection between the kind of status he achieves in El Barrio and his status in the eyes of the outside world. Primo’s reaction to his loss of control again suggests that he uses drugs when he lacks opportunities—not that he lacks opportunities because he uses drugs.
Themes
The Game Room gets moved, then shut down, then reopened with an inferior product (since Ray’s former supplier got imprisoned). Primo and Caesar speculate about what Ray must be thinking and complain about their low pay. But, when Bourgois probes the topic, they launch back into war stories about their highest-paying nights and proclaim they are looking forward to the beginning of the new month (when “monneeey” comes in). Ray and the new guy he hires to take over part of Primo’s shift, Tony, grow more and more suspicious of Primo and Caesar, especially when crack starts disappearing. Everyone suspects Caesar, but the culprit is actually “Ray’s jack-of-all-trades maintenance worker” Gato. Ray beats Gato up and forces him to start selling crack to pay back the supply he stole. To boot, Ray negotiates down Tony’s salary, knowing that Tony and Primo hate each other too much to work together and demand better treatment.
Primo and Caesar’s demotion has nothing to do with their performance, which demonstrates that, even despite Primo’s relatively privileged position in Ray’s hierarchy, there is nothing like job security at the Game Room. They are completely in the dark about management decisions and their future prospects, and while they try to assuage their fears by telling stories, it becomes clear that their working conditions and opportunities are deteriorating. Hiring Tony is another of Ray’s brilliant management decisions, but the agony Tony creates for Primo shows that—in the underground and mainstream economies alike—good management often means worse conditions for workers. This helps explain both why Bourgois’s subjects lack access to the opportunities their parents had, and why their options in the legal economy are so limited.
Themes
Under the heading “The Crackhouse Clique: Dealing with Security,” Bourgois explains that, despite his difficulties, Primo still appears to run the show, and is popular among the large crowd that always hangs out around the crackhouse (especially the teenage girls). Bourgois later realizes that these omnipresent loiterers help inform Primo about the competition, “camouflage the comings and goings of the emaciated addicts,” distract the police (especially the 72-year-old one-eyed alcoholic Abraham, who collects quarters from the game machines), and protect the crackhouse against potential mugging or attacks.
Primo’s clique blurs the bounds of business and leisure, as they are both an economic asset for the crackhouse and his friends. They at once confer him status and offer him the same advantage as Ray’s displays of violence: protection. The clique and Abraham make the Game Room unpalatable for police, who cannot discern who is and is not involved in illegal activity.
Themes
In fact, the Game Room does get robbed twice during Bourgois’s research, and being around friends makes Primo’s job feel less perilous and means there is always a witness if something goes wrong. In fact, Bourgois’s “white face” was probably part of this deterrence strategy—potential robbers probably thought he was an undercover cop, so would stay away from the Game Room. And, of course, Primo’s army of acquaintances also helps him weed out undercover cops.
Bourgois realizes that he is part of Primo’s clique, and that his whiteness is a particularly valuable commodity in the drug market. Again, all of Primo’s decisions are in some way economic, even though he might not explicitly think about them this way.
Themes
Despite making “tens of thousands” of sales and moving at least a million dollars during Bourgois’s research, Primo only gets arrested twice, and this is a more frequent rate of arrest than those at Ray’s other operations. The police, in short, are incompetent and distant from the community—in five years, they never learn to recognize Bourgois, who is invariably the only white man around and even starts going to police-led “community outreach meetings.” In the Game Room, Primo and his associates sold in spots shielded from view and made sure too much crack was never visible at once. They also have to learn to judge when to hide their drugs to avoid a police raid, but not to do it so often that it gets in the way of sales.
Bourgois’s analysis of the police in El Barrio should remind the reader that he is writing from a time before the War on Drugs became militarized and refocused on enforcement and incarceration. The book takes place during the early years of the crack epidemic, when the police are largely irrelevant, passive bystanders. This is partially the product of street culture, which teaches people not to associate or cooperate with police officers, whose work thereby becomes more difficult.
Themes
Primo tells Bourgois how he learned to spot and reject cops. His one criminal conviction came when he carelessly sold to a man without looking at him, and then got caught in the process of stashing the drugs. But his only punishment was probation. And he avoided jail after his second arrest when the police mixed him up with Caesar and undermined the prosecutor’s case.
Primo’s attribution of his arrest to carelessness shows that he believes a basic, consistent level of caution—one he can presumably maintain even when high on drugs—is plenty to avoid the legal consequences of his actions. In other words, the illegality of the drug trade does not dissuade Primo and his associates from participating in it.
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