Crook Manifesto

“From the signs and stores, this stretch of Broadway had grown more Puerto Rican and Dominican since his last visit. On 125th, it was Jews and Italians out, Blacks in, and up here the Spanish replaced the Germans and Irish when they split. Churn, baby, churn.”

This quotation speaks to the novel’s thematic interest in the changing landscape of Harlem in particular, and New York City in general. Ray’s store had originally been owned by an Italian landlord who had purchased the property from a Jewish man. When each ethnic group moves out of the city, another becomes dominant within the neighborhood. Harlem is an area in constant flux. The repetition of the word churn here equates the constant movement and reshuffling of people and communities with that of goods in the underground economy.

“‘Bent hates straight, Carney. Putting on airs. You think you’re better than me?’ The detective shrugged. ‘Only a matter of time before someone tried to clip him.’”

In this quote, Munson speaks to Carney, alleging that no one is solely crooked or straight, good or bad. Those who are more crooked than straight at least understand reality better, for they realize that everyone has the capacity to act outside the bounds of the law. Munson alleges that since no one is truly on the straight and narrow, those who think that they are fooling themselves. There is thus no justification for the sense of superiority that they feel.

“But these are not the old days. The city has changed. It’s crumbling around us and we have to outrun all of the shit raining down.”

This quote illustrates the sense of urban decline that pervades the novel. Although much of this decay begins in Harlem, many of the characters observe the way that it spreads even to affluent neighborhoods. This is reminiscent of New York City in the ’70s, an era of high crime, explosive protests, and general societal unrest.

“You were a cop and then a robber and then a cop again. It didn’t matter how you saw yourself, you were both at the same time.”

This quote illustrates The Situational Nature of Morality. In Harlem, this text suggests, no one is entirely law abiding or entirely criminal. Ethical lines shift according to situation and context. The game of ringolevio is an important symbolic representation of that theme, for according to its rules, those who are cops (theoretically representative of law and order) are, in the game’s next round, criminals.

“The usual New York City childhood: stickball, ringolevio, and bullet-riddled corpses. When John and his pals played ringolevio, the kids still played the old game, the chants echoed in the alley behind the townhouses. Carney ordered them to maintain a Striver’s Row boundary. The Row wasn’t what it used to be, but it ran low on surprises.”

In this quote, Ray remembers an incident during his own childhood when he and his cousin found a dead body on the way home from a game of ringolevio. Wanting to shelter his own son from violence, he directs them to stay close to home during their own games. This speaks to violence as a motif. Even when violence is not directly visible, it is always nearby. It is a backdrop to life in Harlem, both now and when Ray was a child.

“How did Freddie put it? ‘It’s not the same if you don’t cheat a little.’”

This quote speaks to the broader theme of crooked and straight being part of the same line. Freddie here acknowledges that, even during activities with rules and regulations, it is acceptable to bend the rules a bit. Rules, lines in the sand, and ethical boundaries are constantly being challenged, bent, and distorted in this text. This particular quote happens right before Ray sells out Munson to the BLA, and it serves as a signal to the reader that Ray is moving from straight(ish) to crooked, that he’s bending the rules.

“The boys from Gary, Indiana, were a soft touch for an encore. The Jackson 5 started up ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ and Carney thought of the death of Munson. The bassist and the guitarist, Tito or whoever, tumbled into the wistful melody as their brothers swayed and sang between them, three bodies expressing a single lament. May looked up to the stage and crooned with Michael, preserving every pause and intonation from the vinyl; she had summoned them to her city through her devotions. She grabbed Carney’s hand. It had been years since she’d taken his hand in hers. Carney found himself mouthing the words, though the song was a lie. It wasn’t hard to say goodbye at all. As the days smeared into each other it only got easier.”

The Jackson 5 are an important motif within the first section of this text. The band’s music is an ever-present reminder to Ray and to the reader that Ray’s primary motivation, in both crooked and straight dealings, is family. His criminality doesn’t emerge from a place of evil or a lack of morality. He works outside of the law to better provide for his family.

“A fire will catch on its own, given the proper conditions; an accelerant multiplies its power, velocity, and hunger. Pratt was kerosene and the changing culture a bellows. Zippo made his mark on campus with his first group show. He was a couple years older than his fellow students. His experience on the crooked side enriched his work. Blue Movies reframed twelve photographs from his boudoir days, with a row of six close-ups of faces over another row of six clients’ bodies. Frames in a film strip. None of the faces—expressions in a spectrum of coy, downcast, aggressive—belonged to the fragmented bodies. Feather boa, strap of a nightie. Elbow crevices and somehow maudlin nipples.”

This passage illustrates how Zippo’s name functions as a symbol in Part 2. Zippo, the name of a popular brand of lighter, is a fitting nickname for a pyromaniac, but in a broader sense, it speaks to the way that his character ignites and propels the action around him. In this passage, Zippo’s creativity “ignites” his work at art school, and he makes the move from small-time criminal to legitimate filmmaker. Later, his film itself will serve as a kind of powder keg, setting off its own series of fraught events.

“This was America, melting pot and powder keg. Surely something was about to pop off.”

This passage speaks to the sociocultural climate of New York City during the 1970s, an important backdrop to the action of this novel. The melting pot is an assimilationist metaphor, but during multiple eras of US history, that melting hasn’t been without conflict, and in this portion of the text, Whitehead argues that powder keg is perhaps a better metaphor for societal relations during this time.

“Elizabeth opened the door and her face livened at the flowers. She thanked him and went for a vase. Mrs. Carney had figured out he was crooked years ago. Pepper knew this because of her general bemused attitude toward him. She didn’t hold it against him. He wondered what she knew about Carney’s various sidelines.”

This quote illustrates the importance of family within this text, but also speaks to The Situational Nature of Morality. Pepper, although ostensibly a crooked character, has “straight” moments in the text, scenes where his presence in Ray’s life recalls that of a typical family friend or relative.

“Gus Burnett and Burt Miller waited in the Dodge, next to the dumpster behind the restaurant. Pepper didn’t know them; they were Church’s guys, from Alabama. Twenty, twenty-one, greyhound lean and not too talkative. This time tomorrow they were supposed to be back down South, sucking crawdads or plucking homemade banjos or whatever they did down there. They appeared to follow simple instructions fine and gave correct answers when Pepper quizzed them on the setup, solid enough.”

This passage adds to Pepper’s characterization. An important figure within both the second and third parts of this text, Pepper is a complex, round, dynamic character. In this scene, Pepper is shown to be an astute judge of character, but also a man who appreciates order, discipline, and a fixed way of operating under pressure.

“He reached for the glass of water on the little stool beside him. ‘We get movies like that because they don’t teach history right. In school? All sorts of shit you don’t know. “George Washington crossing the Delaware.” It was a famous moment in American history. They don’t tell you he was crossing the river because he heard there were some slaves on sale.’”

This is part of Roscoe Pope’s comedy act. It recalls the comedic stylings of Richard Pryor, a famous figure who, beginning during the 1970s, was known for his drug use and foul language but also for the way his comedy did not shy away from difficult subjects such as race and racism in America.

“He had to admit it. The first time he saw Herald Square, years ago, before the war, he had been impressed with the white man’s skyscrapers, the white man’s towering apartment buildings, the glass-walled restaurants, those big stores crammed with stuff he couldn’t touch. A few miles uptown, Harlem was beginning its slide, in burned-out tenements full of ghosts and stores that never reopened, the schools without schoolbooks. Herald Square had caught up in the years since, it always catches up.”

This quote illustrates the symbolic usage of urban decay and decline. In this passage, Pepper notes the way that urban blight has extended beyond the boundaries of neighborhoods that have long been in crisis. Herald Square had been an affluent, well-kept area. It now resembles the seedier quarters of the city. Through passages such as these, Whitehead illustrates the general climate of urban decline and the uptick in crime that characterized New York City in the 1970s.

“There were a hundred ways to announce you were crooked and a hundred ways to un-announce it. You can peacock it up like a pimp, hang your shingle in polyester plumage. Push the latest high on a street corner, signaling customers with a furtive, yet defiant air. You can un-announce like a banker tucked into a double-breasted suit, installed behind a desk with your name on a plaque. Establish a front: outfit a bodega or stationary store to hide the dice game out back. Or a furniture store. This was Quincy Black’s method, catering to his clientele behind the facade of a renovated Harlem brownstone.”

This quote further illustrates the blurred lines between legality and criminality. Although he has every appearance of legitimacy, Quincy Black runs a successful drug-dealing business from the interior of an affluent-seeming, well-kept home.

“A man has a hierarchy of crime, of what is morally acceptable and what is not, a crook manifesto, and those who subscribe to lesser codes are cockroaches. Are nothing.”

Pepper speaks these titular lines, describing The Situational Nature of Morality. In this passage, the reader learns that Pepper has a specific code, that his criminal acts are not merely the result of violence or weakness of character. A code of ethics is typically associated with law-abiding behavior. Here, Pepper shows otherwise. Even in “crooked” moments, there is an element of “straight” in his thinking.

“His host’s expression clouded as it sunk in that Pepper was not intimidated. Pepper had observed that strong personalities tended to get confused—then incensed—by his even keel. There was nothing he could do about it, even if he cared. Who you are is what you are.”

This is another key passage in Pepper’s characterization. In spite of the violence in his line of work, Pepper is a calm, cool, and unflappable man. Whitehead creates in Pepper a complex representation of both criminality and citizenship, a man who is capable of violent behavior, but also keeps his cool, spends time with Ray’s family, and always thinks his actions through.

“Poor girl makes good was a more interesting story than suburban girl makes good, he supposed. Pepper had heard of passing for white before but passing for broke was a new one on him. Getting over. He’d always liked that expression. Crooks make a big score, grab that jackpot, and law-abiding black folks get over, find a way to outwit white people’s rules. Stealing a little security or safety or success from a world that fought hard to keep that from you.”

This passage describes the way that white audiences respond better to stereotypes than the truth. Lucinda Cole is a much more compelling figure to viewers of Blaxploitation films as the product of an underserved community than she would be as a suburban girl. It speaks to white audiences’ long-standing preference for stereotypes in Black culture.

“The city continued to burn, night after night. Not Fifth Avenue, but Harlem, Brooklyn, the South Bronx. 371 West 118th street had been a four-story tenement presiding over the northeast corner of Morningside Avenue. Behind its blackened exterior, fire had eaten its guts. At half past nine last Thursday night, a clock timer activated an incendiary device. The firebomb had been set in the rear apartment on the top floor to allow the fire to spread before it could be detected from the street, near an air shaft so that it was well fed.”

This passage illustrates the symbolic usage of arson and urban decay. Based on the placement of the incendiary device, this fire is clearly a planned act, and it represents the kind of widespread violence that, as becomes clear in Part 3, has the tacit approval of many in city government. Not only a sign of neighborhood decline, arson and urban decay are a manifestation of structural racism and corruption within the highest echelons of power.

“The next day he took his nephew Robert to Gimbels for some shirts. Ellen, the boy’s mother, always rebuffed Carney when he tried to help out, so he told her the polo shirts were part of the Carney’s Furniture uniform, and that as such, Carney was responsible for them. He had a side play to throw in two pairs of nice Levi’s while they were in the boys’ department, and it came off without a hitch. The boy was a bean-pole, like his father at that age, which made Carney smile.”

This passage speaks to Ray Carney’s interest in family and adds to his characterization. Nothing is more important to Ray than family, and he has a soft spot for Robert in particular because Robert is the son of his favorite cousin, Freddie.

“Carney had no interest in the front end. Thieves removed an item from the straight world and converted it to stolen merchandise. Whereupon the fence helped transform the stones and gold coins and necklaces into legit goods again.”

This passage is an interesting reflection on The Situational Nature of Morality. In this case, it is clear that Ray sees objects in this way, in addition to people. In the same way that an individual can be crooked on one day and straight on the next, an object can go from being legal to illegal to legal again.

“Before the current fiscal crisis and all the cutbacks, Pierce said, there were decades of urban renewal projects that obliterated communities and industrial zones in the name of progress. ‘Ramming the highways through, bulldozing so-called slums, but they were places people lived—black, white, Puerto Rican. Knock down the factories and warehouses, and you wipe out people’s livelihoods, too. The white people take advantage of those new highways out to the suburbs and flee the city into homes subsidized by federal mortgage programs. Mortgages that Black people won’t get. And the Blacks and Puerto Ricans get squeezed into smaller and smaller ghettos that were once thriving neighborhoods. But now those good blue-collar jobs are gone. Can’t buy a house because the lenders have designated the neighborhood as high-risk—the redlining actually creates the conditions it’s warning against. Unemployment, overcrowded tenements, and you get overwhelmed social services. It started, the breakdown.’”

This passage describes institutional racism. Specifically, it shows how racist housing policies such as redlining disenfranchise Black and brown citizens while at the same time privileging white Americans.

“The city was burning. It was burning not because of sick men with matches and cans of gas, but because the city itself was sick, waiting for fire, begging for it.”

This passage illustrates the extent to which institutional racism, rather than individual action, is responsible for the city’s downturn. Although he once blamed arsonists, Ray realizes during the novel’s third section that corruption in city hall is much more to blame than the people holding the lighters and gas cans.

“Uptown rules: rules get bent in the name of survival.”

This passage addresses the reason that so many characters in this novel are both “crooked” and “straight.” It is not a lack of ethics or weakness of character that force men like Ray Carney into criminality, but necessity. Ray does what he must to better support his family.