Philippe Bourgois's 'In Search Of Respect'

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In the book, “In Search of Respect” Philippe Bourgois moved to East Harlem to do research on poverty by studying two Puerto Ricans he befriended. One of the Puerto Ricans is Primo who manages a crackhouse den, which is the called the Game Room. The other Puerto Rican is Caesar who is a lookout. Bourgois met these two Puerto Ricans and met their boss Ray, and researched the structural oppression they faced. Bourgois explains the obstacles Primo and Caesar had to face and how they ended up being drug dealers.

Primo and Caesar also had issues with their cultural identities. Caesar didn’t know which clothes to wear and his supervisor called him a hoodlum. He also didn’t have enough money and got clothes dirty when he did construction work. On the other hand, Primo had to leave the job training because his coworkers were making fun of him. He felt humiliated and felt like he has to sacrifice his culture identity to keep working. Primo and Caesar were around a powerful culture, which they knew nothing about. Clothes represents the level of a person’s social status. The …show more content…
He was specific and went in depth of the obstacles they had faced. He explains the causes that leads to drug dealing such as no job availability and no education. He also explains the racism they must go through I could relate to this in today’s world because there is still racism going on till this day. He did convince readers that we should look at people at a different perspective. For example, regular people automatically sees Primo selling drugs and automatically say he’s a bad person without even thinking. On the other hand, they don’t know what Primo had to go through before he became a drug dealer. Bourgois does an excellent job analyzing Primo’s and Caesar’s experience because of the many details he included in his experience with Primo and