Christian Persaud

In Search of Respect

Reading Response:

One of the many factors that lead to the structural violence depicted in this story is prejudice. Prejudice is a rampant issue among the powers that be in order to keep a certain social class in check. A quote from the story: "[East Harlem is] a nursery of all kinds of law-breakers; there are nests of narcotics, thieving stealing, cheating and every conceivable kind of law-breaking." We can derive that continued unjust and unequal treatment of an oppressed group will only lead to them having to cut corners and straddle the line of being criminals. In the story, we see these individuals as a group of drug dealers that have to resort to crime to survive.

The repercussions of structurally violent neighborhoods do not only involve criminals and their gang affiliates: “Within the neighborhood’s long heritage of a substance abuse-driven underground economy, heroin and cocaine have been the most disruptive to the daily quality of life.” Structural violence is not only among the wrongdoers in the community. As these very people are indeed deprived of income, we can see its effects become embedded in the infrastructure, the communities and the way people decide to deal with the everyday struggles that come with it. For example, we see in the story that a common occurrence in these types of neighborhoods is burned down establishments with the sole purpose to conjure up insurance money for owners. As we see in the reading, many have to resort to unethical and shrewd tactics as a method of survival.

As Primo says in the story: “You have to do good for yourself in order to achieve, and you have to achieve in life in order to get somewhere.” He then says, “The struggle’s harder for the poor, but not impossible; just harder.” These quotes contain the essence of what goes on in Primo and his friends’ lives everyday. Although that are in unfavorable conditions, they cannot sit back and rely exclusively on faith and devotion. There are no easy ways out for them and they have realized it very early on.