East Harlem (El Barrio) Term Analysis

“Man, I don’t blame where I’m at right now on nobody else but myself.”

Cocaine and crack, in particular during the mid-1980s and through the early 1990s, followed by heroin in the mid-1990s, have been the fastest growing—if not the only—equal opportunity employers of men in Harlem. Retail drug sales easily outcompete other income-generating opportunities, whether legal or illegal.

The street in front of my tenement was not atypical, and within a two block radius I could—and still can, as of this final draft—obtain heroin, crack, powder cocaine, hypodermic needles, methadone, Valium, angel dust, marijuana, mescaline, bootleg alcohol, and tobacco. Within one hundred yards of my stoop there were three competing crackhouses selling vials at two, three, and five dollars.

The street culture of resistance is predicated on the destruction of its participants and the community harboring them. In other words, although street culture emerges out of a personal search for dignity and a rejection of racism and subjugation, it ultimately becomes an active agent in personal degradation and community ruin.

Furthermore, as the anthropologist Laura Nader stated succinctly in the early 1970 s, “Don’t study the poor and powerless because everything you say about them will be used against them.” I do not know if it is possible for me to present the story of my three and a half years of residence in El Barrio without falling prey to a pornography of violence, or a racist voyeurism — ultimately the problem and the responsibility is also in the eyes of the beholder.

Most people in the United States are somehow convinced that they would be ripped limb from limb by savagely enraged local residents if they were to set foot in Harlem. While everyday danger is certainly real in El Barrio, the vast majority of the 110,599 people—51 percent Latino/Puerto Rican, 39 percent African-American, and 10 percent “other”—who lived in the neighborhood, according to the 1990 Census, are not mugged with any regularity—if ever. Ironically, the few whites residing in the neighborhood are probably safer than their African-American and Puerto Rican neighbors because most would-be muggers assume whites are either police officers or drug addicts—or both—and hesitate before assaulting them.

Primo, Benzie, Maria, and everyone else around that night had never been tête-a-tête with a friendly white before, so it was with a sense of relief that they saw I hung out with them out of genuine interest rather than to obtain drugs or engage in some other act of perdición. The only whites they had ever seen at such close quarters had been school principals, policemen, parole officers, and angry bosses. Even their schoolteachers and social workers were largely African-American and Puerto Rican. Despite his obvious fear, Primo could not hide his curiosity. As he confided in me several months later, he had always wanted a chance to “conversate” with an actual live representative of mainstream, “drug-free” white America.

“Everybody is doing it. It is almost impossible to make friends who are not addicts. If you don’t want to buy the stuff, somebody is always there who is ready to give it to you. It is almost impossible to keep away from it because it is practically thrown at you. I f they were to arrest people for taking the stuff, they would have to arrest practically everybody.”