Crack Analysis in In Search of Respect

A smokable form of cocaine, often heavily diluted or adulterated with other substances, that is cheaper because of its low cocaine content but stronger and shorter-lasting because it is smoked rather than snorted. Crack arrives in and takes over the East Harlem drug scene during the late 1980s, and virtually all the people Bourgois profiles in his book are addicted to it or buy and sell it.

Crack Quotes in In Search of Respect

The In Search of Respect quotes below are all either spoken by Crack or refer to Crack. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Anthropological Research and its Consequences Theme Icon

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.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 3

Explanation and Analysis:

It is only the omnipresent danger, the high profit margin, and the desperate tone of addiction that prevent crack dealing from becoming overwhelmingly routine and tedious.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: Chapter 377

Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker), Primo, Ray

Page Number and Citation: Chapter 3109

Explanation and Analysis:

Contrary to my expectations, most of the dealers had not completely withdrawn from the legal economy. On the contrary—as I have shown in Chapter 3, in discussing the jobs that Willie and Benzie left to become crack dealers and addicts—they are precariously perched on the edge of the legal economy. Their poverty remains their only constant as they alternate between street-level crack dealing and just-above-minimum wage legal employment. The working-class jobs they manage to find are objectively recognized to be among the least desirable in U.S. society; hence the following list of just a few of the jobs held by some of the Game Room regulars during the years I knew them: unlicensed asbestos remover, home attendant, street-corner flyer distributor, deep-fat fry cook, and night-shift security guard on the violent ward at the municipal hospital for the criminally insane.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker), Benzie, Willie

Page Number and Citation: Chapter 4115

Explanation and Analysis:

Substance abuse is perhaps the dimension of inner-city poverty most susceptible to short-term policy intervention. In part, this is because drugs are not the root of the problems presented in these pages; they are the epiphenomenonal expression of deeper, structural dilemmas. Self-destructive addiction is merely the medium for desperate people to internalize their frustration, resistance, and powerlessness. In other words, we can safely ignore the drug hysterias that periodically sweep through the United States. Instead we should focus our ethical concerns and political energies on the contradictions posed by the persistence of inner-city poverty in the midst of extraordinary opulence. In the same vein, we need to recognize and dismantle the class- and ethnic-based apartheids that riddle the U.S. landscape.

Related Characters: Philippe Bourgois (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 319

Explanation and Analysis:

Crack Term Timeline in In Search of Respect

The timeline below shows where the term Crack appears in In Search of Respect. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

The Crack Trade and the Underground Economy Theme Icon

...the guise of “the war on drugs,” and the turn toward marijuana and away from crack, which was decreasingly available on the street and noted less and less in “hospital emergency... (full context)

Poverty, History, and Public Policy Theme Icon

Bourgois begins that he “was forced into crack against my will.” In 1985, when he first moved to East Harlem (“El Barrio”) to... (full context)

...to illegal construction jobs and, of course, selling drugs, the most lucrative of all. “Heroin, crack, powder cocaine, hypodermic needles, methadone, Valium, angel dust, marijuana, mescaline, bootleg alcohol, and tobacco” are... (full context)

...on the ground, when, for instance, the pain of watching “a pregnant friend fanatically smoking crack” was not dulled by “remember[ing] the history of her people’s colonial oppression and humiliation.” And... (full context)

...“a disastrous end” when he “inadvertently ‘disrespect[s]’ Ray,” the owner of a number of local crackhouses, including one nicknamed “La Farmacia” in the now-burned out building where he grew up. (full context)

...“Learning Street Smarts,” Bourgois explains that Ray both lets him conduct his research in his crackhouses and physically protects him. Ray is friendly and generous that night, in contrast to “his... (full context)

...gangs, takes Bourgois aside and tells him to stay away from the Game Room (the crackhouse Primo runs for Ray). Primo admits that he is afraid of Ray, who used to... (full context)

Under “Accessing the Game Room Crackhouse,” Bourgois explains that his first goal upon arriving in El Barrio is convincing Primo he... (full context)

In “From Puerto Rican Jíbaro to Hispanic Crack Dealer,” Bourgois explains that the U.S. expropriated and consolidated farmers’ lands after initially occupying Puerto... (full context)

Under “From Speakeasy to Crackhouse,” Bourgois explicitly turns back to the problem of substance abuse and crime in East Harlem,... (full context)

In the chapter’s last section, “The Free Market for Crack and Cocaine,” Bourgois explains that the Mafia’s decline coincides with the rise of cocaine and... (full context)

...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... (full context)

In the section “Living with Crack,” Bourgois explains the Game Room’s origins: Felix, Primo’s cousin and Ray’s old friend, originally founded... (full context)

...addicted at the time of Bourgois’s research, interrupts to comment on how much he loves crack). (full context)

Gender Roles and Family Violence Theme Icon

...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... (full context)

...“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,”... (full context)

...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... (full context)

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... (full context)

In the section “Minimum Wage Crack Dealers,” Bourgois turns explicitly to “the mystery of why most street-level crack dealers remain penniless.”... (full context)

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... (full context)

...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.... (full context)

Under the heading “The Crackhouse Clique: Dealing with Security,” Bourgois explains that, despite his difficulties, Primo still appears to run... (full context)

...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... (full context)

...Laziness, and Self-Destruction,” Bourgois notes that the dealers he befriended tended to oscillate between selling crack and doing “the least desirable [jobs] in U.S. society,” including “unlicensed asbestos remover, home attendant,... (full context)

...the street scene.” He got fired from his last job because he was still using crack at the Game Room all night, every night, and showing up exhausted. He alternates between... (full context)

...work.) His friend Willie is also deeply confused and spends the night “on an all-night crack binge.” (full context)

...down suddenly before he can get his certificate. Meanwhile, he is on trial for selling crack to an undercover police officer and his lawyer berates him for refusing to get a... (full context)

...being surrounded by racist whites and excluded from the union, not to mention away from crack during the day, so stopped showing up. The two most dangerous construction jobs, “building demolition... (full context)

...those who work in office buildings “wanna be white” and quit his job to sell crack after a white woman ran away from him on sight—when he was making an effort... (full context)

...born, she runs out of money, and she grows depressed. To compensate, she starts selling crack and falls in love with Primo. Even he describes their first night together an unusual... (full context)

...months of Welfare that the Department has denied her. But this includes her time dealing crack. When she decides to quit and get back on Welfare for her children’s safety, her... (full context)

...themselves for their parents’ addictions and romantic troubles, and often find themselves hanging out in crackhouses and on the street from a young age. (full context)

Under the heading “The Demonization of Mothers and Crack,” Bourgois notes that single-mother households are actually “predicated on submission to patriarchy”—namely, “a father’s right... (full context)

...moralistic denunciations of a community, usually racial, associated with the drug in question, during the crack epidemic inner-city women are specifically considered tied to the drug. Because many are mothers and... (full context)

...heartbroken at what he sees and tries his best to get pregnant women to avoid crack (and Primo and Ray not to sell it to them). Benzie recalls a customer once... (full context)

...risk. Many of these women were uncertain about becoming mothers, and others even argued that crack was good for their babies. They “criticized the hypocrisy of the street culture” but never... (full context)

...years. Harlem is more dangerous than the World War II battlefield. By “poisoning their fetuses,” crack-addicted pregnant women “accelerate the destruction of already doomed progeny” and “escape the long-term agony” associated... (full context)

...off his girlfriends’ income and setting them against each other, and Luis trades sex for crack. One young man, Pedro, celebrates women who prostitute themselves. Caesar’s cousin Eddie is the only... (full context)

...various children as an excuse to switch from his low-paid security guard job to dealing crack—but never actually provides for them even when he is earning well and buys various cars.... (full context)

After noting Caesar’s commentary on the book—“Ooh, Felipe! You make us sound like such sensitive crack dealers”—Bourgois admits that “there is no panacea for” the problems he outlines in the book.... (full context)

...abuse will not change “the class- and ethnic-based apartheids that riddle the U.S. landscape.” The crack epidemic, like most drug epidemics, has little to do with the substance itself and everything... (full context)

...other section, “Hip Hop Jíbaro: Toward a Politics of Mutual Respect,” Bourgois emphasizes that the crack dealers he studied sought “dignity and fulfillment” through their work, and not only money. There... (full context)

...and has spent more than a year in prison (alongside Luis, his uncle) for dealing crack. He still sometimes sells drugs and lives at home. Their daughter Tabitha works and lives... (full context)

...a retired drug kingpin.” Little Pete got shot and then thrown in prison for selling crack, where he is serving time with another former salesman of Ray’s, Nestor, who shot a... (full context)

Luis is out of prison on probation and seems to be staying away from crack while he looks for a place in a treatment program. However, his wife Wanda is... (full context)

...neighbors still live in the same place: the mother is a bartender, her boyfriend sells crack, and one of her sons is now helping him, while the other sells for another... (full context)

...Game Room shut down in 1992. Two storefronts and two teenage crews are still selling crack. A “well-run and completely legal bodega” has also opened, and an old abandoned building turned... (full context)

...and Carmen are all living in Connecticut. Caesar has gone through rehab but continues using crack and Primo is trying to convince Maria to throw him out. (full context)

...“his father Luis has just been jailed and his mother [Wanda] is exchanging sex for crack under the elevated railroad tracks on Park Avenue.” Luis’s son has three children. On his... (full context)

Crack Term Analysis

Crack Quotes in In Search of Respect

Crack Term Timeline in In Search of Respect