A low-level crackhouse employee who is responsible for watching out for police and potentially violent customers or situations. At the Game Room, most of the lookouts Primo hires are crack addicts whom he knows he can pay in drugs and believes he can more or less rely on—however, all but Caesar prove too unstable and get fired.
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Lookout Term Timeline in In Search of Respect
The timeline below shows where the term Lookout appears in In Search of Respect. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Violating Apartheid In the United States
...little wild in the streets.” Primo and Caesar, his best friend and the Game Room’s lookout, help Bourgois flee the Game Room whenever Ray shows up, but Primo reports that Ray...
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...he is an “honorary nigga.’” A few years later, drunk and high on speedball, Primo’s lookout “Benzie” (Benito) admitted that he initially thought Bourgois was “a faggot” because of the way...
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Chapter 3: Crackhouse Management: Addiction, Discipline, and Dignity
...(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...
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...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...
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...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...
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...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,...
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Chapter 6: Redrawing the Gender Line on the Street
...just while greeting Ray’s new baby. In fact, she was only supposed to be a lookout, and Caesar (who has the same job) considers her a “stupid ho’” for deciding to...
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Chapter 7: Families and Children in Pain
...trying to join the police, soon becomes “a bona fide drug courier” and then a lookout for the Game Room. When Bourgois confronts him about this flip, Junior insists that he...
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