20) The Informal Life of the Sidewalk It goes without saying, perhaps, that one good way to find out more about people is to get to know them at first hand, but this is more easily said than done. When I began, i knew that if i was to find out what was taking place on the sidewalk, I would have to bridge many gaps between myself and the people I hoped to understand. This involved thinking carefully about who they are and who I am I was uneasy. One of the most notorious gaps in American society is the difference be- tween people related to race and the discourse revolving around this volatile issue. Though there were also differences between our social classes (I was raised in a middle-class suburb, whereas most of them grew up in lower-and working-class urban neighborhoods), religions (I am Jewish and most of them are Muslim or Christian), levels of education(I hold a Ph. D. in sociology and attended two years of law school, whereas some of them did not graduate from high school), and occupations(I am a college professor of sociology and they are street vendors ), none of these differences seemed to be as significant as that of race. Actually the interaction between race and class differences very likely made me uneasy, though i was unaware of that at the time When i stood at Hakim's table. I felt that, as a white male, i stood out In my mind, I had no place at his table, because he was selling so-called black books. I thought that his product formed the boundary of a sort of exclusion- ary black zone where African Americans were welcome but whites were not. It is interesting that I felt this way. African Americans buy products every day from stores owned by whites, often having to travel to other neigh borhoods to acquire the goods they need. They must shop among whites, and often speak of enduring slights and insults from the proprietors of these busi- nesses. 'I myself rarely have to go to neighborhoods not dominated by whites in search of goods or services. None of the book vendors ever insulted, of fended, or threatened me. None of them told me i was not welcome at his table. None of them ever made anti-white or anti-Semitic remarks. Yet I felt unwelcome in ways I had not felt during previous studies that had brought me into contact with African Americans. This was because many of the con versations I heard were about so-called black books and because the people participating in them seemed to be defining themselves as a people. (Act ally, there were also white customers at Hakims table, though I didnt know it at the time. I felt out of place. Also. I wanted the trust that would be nec-
The Book Vendor(2 1 essary to write about the life of the street, and race differences seem a great obstacle to such trust. One day, before I knew Hakim and after I had concluded that these ta- bles were not an appropriate place for me to hang out, I walked by his book table on my way to an appointment. I was surprised to see for sale a copy of Slims Table, my own first book Where did you get this from? "I asked, wondering if it had been stolen I have my sources, "Hakim responded. Do you have some interest in this book?” Well, i wrote it, "I responded “ Really?? Do you live around here?” "Yes. I live around the corner, on mercer Street "Why don't you give me your address and telephone number for my Rolodex His Rolodex? I wondered. This unhoused man has a Rolodex? Why I as sumed that Hakim was unhoused is difficult to know for certain. In part, it was due to the context in which he was working: many of the African American men selling things on the block lived right there on the sidewalk. There was no way for me to distinguish easily between those vendors who were unhoused and those who were not, and I had never taken the time to think much about it. I gave him my telephone number and walked off to my appointment A few weeks later, I ran into an African-American man who had been in my first-year class at the New York University School of Law. Purely by co- incidence, he told me that he was on his way to see a book vendor from whom he had been getting some of his reading material during the past year. It was Hakim I told my classmate about my interest in getting to know Hakim, and ex plained my reservations. He told me that he didn' t think it would be as hard as I thought. Hakim had apparently gone through spells of sleeping in the parks during his time as a vendor, and sometimes stayed at my classmate's home with his wife and children A few days later my classmate brought him to meet me in the law-school lounge. When I told Hakim that I wanted to get to know him and the people at his vending table, he was circumspect, saying only that he would think about it. A few days later, he dropped off a brief but eloquent note at my
The Book Vendor( 23 apartment, explaining that he didn t think it was a good idea. "My suspicion is couched in the collective memory of a people who have been academically slandered for generations, "he wrote. African Americans are at a point where we have to be suspicious of people who want to tell stories about us. During the next couple of months, Hakim and I saw each other abou once a week or so on our own. On a few occasions we met and talked at the Cozy Soup Burger on Broadway. It seemed that we had decided to get to know each other better Early one morning a few months later, I approached his table as he was setting up and asked, What are you doing working on Sixth Avenue in the I think there are a number of black folks in these corporate environments that have to make this decision, he replied. Some are not as extreme as I am Some take it out on themselves in other ways It had not occurred to me that Hakim had come to work on the street from a corporate environment. Learning this about him has been significant as I have worked to understand his life on the street. In the universities where I teach, I meet many African-American students who believe that it will be very difficult for them to maintain their integrity while working in corporate life. Many of them have come to this conclusion by hearing of the experiences of relatives and friends who have already had problems; others have themselves sensed racial intolerance on campus. 2 Yet, in choosing to work on the street, Hakim had clearly made what would be a radical, if not entirely incomprehensible, decision by the standards of my African American students. Once we had discussed some of these issues in depth over the subsequent weeks, Hakim volunteered that he felt comfortable let- ting me observe his table with the purpose of writing about it, and I began to He told me he was born Anthony E. Francis in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957. His parents, Harriet E and Ansley J. Francis, had come to Brooklyn from the U.S. Virgin Islands; they separated when he was in grade school. He joined the Nation of Islam as a high-school student. Later, he attended Rut gers University, his tuition paid by grants and loans for disadvantaged youth He told me he had completed his coursework but never received a diploma because at the end of his senior year he owed about five hundred dollars to the school
24) The Informal Life of the Sidewalk During college, he wrote articles for The Black Voice, a school newspa per, as well as for a national magazine called The Black Collegian. 3 Hakim said that, two years after finishing at Rutgers, he ended his affiliation with the American Muslim Mission, although he retained his adopted Muslim name. In his own words, "I could no longer walk in lockstep I needed my longitude and latitude. " Even though he is no longer a practicing Muslim, he often says he still feels a special respect for people who have chosen that After college, he told me, he aspired to enter publishing but was turned down for every position for which he applied. He then began a series of jobs as a proofreader in law, accounting, and investment-banking firms, including Peat Marwick, Drexel Burnham Lambert, and Robinson, Silverman. During this period, he says, he read hundreds of books and magazines and spent most of his free time in bookstores throughout the city, including the Libera- tion Bookstore the well-known African-American bookstore in harlem. He told me he was dismissed from Robinson, Silverman in 1991, during an em- ployee review, for alleged incompetence according to some unnamed attor ney at the frm.4 He had observed the sidewalk book vendors in Greenwich Village and believed that they had discovered a way to subsist in New York without buy- ing into the"corporate-employee mind-set "As a vendor of black books,he decided, he would have work that was meaningful-that sustained him eco- nomically and intellectually. He began by working for one of the other ven- dors for a few days, and then borrowed money from a former roommate to start his own table When Hakim and his customers use the term"black books, "he says, they are using a kind of shorthand for works on a constellation of related subjects and issues. These books may be geared toward helping people of African descent understand where they fit in; codifying the achievements of people of African descent; uncovering the history of African Americans, and of white racism; or helping African Americans develop the knowledge and pride necessary to participate in the wider society. The publishers of such books often signal their prospective readers by printing the label"African-American Studies"or"Black Studies"on the up per left-hand corner of the back cover. These labels refer to an academic dis ipline that began to be codified only as recently as the 1960s. Responding