Righteous Dopefiend

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2008

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Intimate Apartheid”

Chapter 1 explores the role of race and ethnicity in the lives of people who are addicted to crack, heroin, and alcohol and who drift in and out of levels of homelessness. Bourgois and Schonberg describe the interactions between white, Black, and Latinx inhabitants at a majority-white encampment where Frank, Felix (a Latino man and the encampment’s only “honorary” white person), Hogan, Petey, and Scotty are living. When a young Black man named Carter James, or CJ, who smokes crack and drinks alcohol, comes to the encampment, he is welcomed. Initially, CJ is better off than the rest, since he has a legal job as a valet and a place to live with his sister. However, when he quickly loses both his housing and his employment, he becomes more of a taker than a giver in the moral economy. After several other Black people come into the encampment, tensions rise, resulting in white flight—almost all of the white inhabitants form another encampment elsewhere.

Felix, a man whose parents are from Central America, finds himself in a new ethnic space, befriending another Latino man named Vic. Felix stays on good terms with the Black inhabitants, much to the chagrin of Frank, his running partner—the term used within the community for a romantic partner or closely bonded friend with whom one shares both drugs and the work of procuring them. Felix even later betrays Frank by helping Vic’s son, Little Vic, mug Frank. Little Vic recently got out of prison; he comes to the encampment to sell and use crack with his father, before being arrested for violently assaulting someone during a crack binge. Soon after, Vic Senior leaves the encampment to move in with his mother, leaving Felix alone, caught between the white and Black encampments. Felix becomes increasingly resentful of the Black inhabitants and ultimately decides to try to return to his “honorary white” status.

The chapter ends with a description of Al and Sonny’s unusual interracial partnership and the ways they both complain about and support each other.

Chapter 1 Analysis

Schonberg and Bourgois use the term “intimate apartheid” to describe “the involuntary and predictable manner in which sharply delineated segregation and conflict impose themselves at the level of the everyday practices driven by habitus” (47). The phrase “intimate apartheid” captures the essential duality of their project in this book: to describe the impacts of large-scale social and structural forces at a deeply personal, individual level. Race and ethnicity play a significant role in the lived experience of being unhoused and dealing with addiction. As members of the unhoused community of Edgewater Boulevard segregate themselves into race-based sub-communities, they reflect racial disparities and animosities within the wider society—evidence of The Racialization of Poverty, Homelessness, and Addiction. Schonberg and Bourgois note, for example, that “white flight”—a term that typically refers to relatively affluent white urbanites departing for the suburbs as new Black residents move into their urban neighborhoods—occurs even among the unhoused community. Rather than fostering solidarity, the desperately limited resources in the Edgewater community tend to exacerbate racial fault lines, breeding a sense of competition that can target any aspect of a person’s intersectional identity.

The racial tensions and disparities present in this community represent just one of the many forms of Politically and Institutionally Structured Violence, as structural inequalities in the wider economy impact life on that economy’s fringes. The anthropologists describe the ethnic components of social habits and norms at Edgewater. Racism can be reflected in the ways people take drugs, connect with their community, and generally understand the workings of the world. Felix’s reluctant acceptance of “honorary white” status reflects this dynamic, as he finds himself forced to choose between two racialized communities in conflict, neither of which reflects his real identity. This chapter is vital in introducing the reader to the racialization of poverty and the related theme of politically and institutionally structured violence—a theory that aims to understand violent or self-destructive behaviors not simply as individual choices but as responses to a violent social structure.