Ray Character Analysis

My long-term goal has always been to give something back to the community. When I discussed with Ray and his employees my desire to write a book of life stories “about poverty and marginalization” that might contribute to a more progressive understanding of inner-city problems by mainstream society, they thought I was crazy and treated my concerns about social responsibility with suspicion. In their conception everyone in the world is hustling, and anyone in their right mind would want to write a best seller and make a lot of money. It had not occurred to them that they would ever get anything back from this book project, except maybe a good party on publication day. On several occasions my insistence that there should be a tangible political benefit for the community from my research project spawned humiliating responses.

In the five years that I knew Primo he must have made tens of thousands of hand-to-hand crack sales; more than a million dollars probably passed through his fingers. Despite this intense activity, however, he was only arrested twice, and only two other sellers at the Game Room were arrested during this same period. No dealer was ever caught at Ray’s other crackhouses, not even at the Social Club on La Farmacia’s corner, even though its business was brisker.

The contrast between Ray’s consistent failures at establishing viable, legal business ventures—that is, his deli, his legal social club, and his Laundromat—versus his notable success at running a complex franchise of retail crack outlets, highlight the different “cultural capitals” needed to operate as a private entrepreneur in the legal economy versus the underground economy.

Based on my relationship to the fathers who worked for Ray, public policy efforts to coax poor men back into nuclear households are misguided. The problem is just the reverse: Too many abusive fathers are present in nuclear households terrorizing children and mothers. If anything, women take too long to become single mothers once they have babies. They often tolerate inordinate amounts of abuse.

My long-term goal has always been to give something back to the community. When I discussed with Ray and his employees my desire to write a book of life stories “about poverty and marginalization” that might contribute to a more progressive understanding of inner-city problems by mainstream society, they thought I was crazy and treated my concerns about social responsibility with suspicion. In their conception everyone in the world is hustling, and anyone in their right mind would want to write a best seller and make a lot of money. It had not occurred to them that they would ever get anything back from this book project, except maybe a good party on publication day. On several occasions my insistence that there should be a tangible political benefit for the community from my research project spawned humiliating responses.

In the five years that I knew Primo he must have made tens of thousands of hand-to-hand crack sales; more than a million dollars probably passed through his fingers. Despite this intense activity, however, he was only arrested twice, and only two other sellers at the Game Room were arrested during this same period. No dealer was ever caught at Ray’s other crackhouses, not even at the Social Club on La Farmacia’s corner, even though its business was brisker.

The contrast between Ray’s consistent failures at establishing viable, legal business ventures—that is, his deli, his legal social club, and his Laundromat—versus his notable success at running a complex franchise of retail crack outlets, highlight the different “cultural capitals” needed to operate as a private entrepreneur in the legal economy versus the underground economy.

Based on my relationship to the fathers who worked for Ray, public policy efforts to coax poor men back into nuclear households are misguided. The problem is just the reverse: Too many abusive fathers are present in nuclear households terrorizing children and mothers. If anything, women take too long to become single mothers once they have babies. They often tolerate inordinate amounts of abuse.