concerned my personal safety: What the hell is Bill Wilson going to do if he finds out about this? How am I supposed to know whether to address an interview subject as black, African American, or Negro? Did every Ph.D. student have to go through this? Can I go to the bathroom? The sun had set, and it was getting colder. I pulled my jacket tighter and bent over, trying to keep out of the wintry draft.
Yo! Freeze, you want one?”
An older man walked in with a grocery bag full of beers and offered a bottle to one of the young men guarding me. He passed out beers to everyone there. Pretty soon they were all in a better mood. They even gave me a bottle.
By now it was well into the evening. No one seemed to have anywhere to go. The young men just sat in the stairwell telling one another all kinds of stories: about sexual conquests, the best way to smoke a marijuana cigarette, schoolteachers they’d like to have sex with, the rising cost of clothing, cops they wanted to kill, and where they would go when their high-rise building was torn down. This last fact surprised me. Nothing in our records at the university suggested that these projects were closing.
“You have to leave?” I asked. “What kind of neighborhood will you be going to?”
“Nigger, did someone tell you to talk?” one of them said.
“Yeah, Julio,” said another, moving in closer. “You ain’t got no business here.”
I shut my mouth for a while, but some other men stopped by, and they were more talkative. I learned that the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) was indeed tearing down the Lake Park projects in order to build condominiums and town houses. Some residents were staying on as squatters, and the gang was helping them by pirating electricity.
It was clear to me at this point that the young men I’d stumbled upon in this stairwell were junior members of a broad-based gang, the Black Kings, that sold crack cocaine. The older members explained that the gang was trying to forestall demolition but that it wasn’t a pure act of charity: When this building was torn down, they would lose one of their best drug-selling locations.
Once in a while, I tried to interject a research question-What kinds of jobs did the people who lived here have? Why weren’t the police in the building?-but they seemed less interested in answering me than in talking among themselves about sex, power, and money.
After a few hours, J.T. returned with a few other men, each of them carrying a grocery bag. More beer. It was late, and everyone seemed a little punchy. The air was stale, and some of the young men had been wondering when they might be able to leave. For the moment, however, the beer seemed to settle them down.
“Here,” J.T. said, tossing me another bottle. Then he came closer. “You know you’re not supposed to be here,” he said quietly. He seemed to feel sorry for me and, at the same time, curious about my presence. Then he, too, began talking about the scheduled demolition of the Lake Park projects. He explained that he and his men had holed up in this building partly out of protest, joining the residents to challenge the housing authority’s decision to kick them out.
Then he asked me where I was from.
“California,” I said, surprised at the change in topic. “Born in India.”
“Hmm. So you don’t speak Spanish.”
“Actually, I do.”
“See! I told you this nigger was a Mexican,” said one young gangster, jumping up with a beer in his hand. “We should’ve beat his ass back then, man! Sent him back to his people. You know they’re coming around tonight, you know they will be here. We need to get ready-”
J.T. shot the young man a look, then turned back to me. “You’re not from Chicago,” he said. “You should really not be walking through the projects. People can get hurt.”
J.T. started tossing questions at me. What other black neighborhoods, he asked, was I going to with my questionnaire? Why do researchers use multiple-choice surveys like the one I was using? Why don’t they just talk with people? How much money can you make as a professor?
Then he asked what I hoped to gain by studying young black people. I ticked off a few of the pressing questions that sociologists were asking about urban poverty.
“I had a few sociology classes,” he said. “In college. Hated that shit.”
The last word I expected to exit this man’s mouth was “college.” But there it was. I didn’t want to push my luck, so I thought I’d just keep listening and hope for a chance to ask about his background.
By now everyone seemed fairly drunk and, more alarmingly, excited at the prospect of a gang war with the Mexicans. Some of the older men started talking logistics-where to station the gang members for the fighting, which vacant apartments could be used as look-out spots, and so on.
J.T. dismissed their belief that something was going to happen that night. Once again he ordered two of the younger men to stay with me. Then he left. I returned to my seat, sipping a beer now and then. It looked like I would be spending the night with them, so I tried to accept my fate. I was grateful when they said I could go to the bathroom-which, as it turned out, was another stairwell a few floors up. Considering that water, and probably urine, were constantly dripping onto our own landing, I wondered why they didn’t use a lower floor instead.
The young men stayed up in the stairwell all night, drinking and smoking. Some of them strayed out to the balcony once in a while to see if any cars had pulled up to the building. One of them threw an empty beer bottle to the ground six stories down. The sound of broken glass echoing through the stairwell gave me a fright, but no one else even flinched.
Every so often a few new people came in, always with more beer. They talked vaguely about gang issues and the types of weapons that different gangs had. I listened as attentively as I could but stopped asking questions. Occasionally someone asked me again about my background. They all at last seemed convinced that I was not in fact a Mexican gang member, although some of them remained concerned that I “spoke Mexican.” A few of them dozed off inadvertently, sitting on the concrete floor, their heads leaning against the wall.
I spent most of the night sitting on the cold steps, trying to avoid the protruding shards of metal. I would have liked to sleep also, but I was too nervous.
Finally J.T. came back. The early-morning sun was making its way into the stairwell. He looked tired and preoccupied.
“Go back to where you came from,” he told me, “and be more careful when you walk around the city.” Then, as I began gathering up my bag and clipboard, he talked to me about the proper way to study people. “You shouldn’t go around asking them silly-ass questions,” he said. “With people like us, you should hang out, get to know what they do, how they do it. No one is going to answer questions like that. You need to understand how young people live on the streets.”
I was astounded at what a thoughtful person J.T. appeared to be. It seemed as if he were somehow invested in my succeeding, or at least considered himself responsible for my safety. I got up and headed for the stairs. One of the older men reached out and offered me his hand. I was surprised. As I shook his hand, he nodded at me. I glanced back and noticed that everyone, including J.T., was watching.
What are you supposed to say after a night like this? I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile, so I just turned and left.
As I walked back to my apartment in Hyde Park, everything seemed fundamentally different. Crossing from one neighborhood to the next, I speculated about gang boundaries. When I saw a group of people huddled on a corner, I wondered if they were protecting their turf. I had a lot of questions: Why would anyone join a gang? What were the benefits? Didn’t they get bored hanging out in stairwells-and how could anyone possibly stand the smell of urine for that long? The surveys in my bag felt heavy and useless. I began to worry about my relationship with Professor Wilson. He certainly wouldn’t approve of my experimental journey, done without his approval, and I wondered whether he would pull me off the project if he found out what I’d done. The voice of my father-a professor himself-entered my head. He had always given me advice about education. Throughout my college years, he stressed the need to listen to my teachers, and when I shipped off to Chicago, he told me that the key to success in graduate school would be to develop a good relationship with my advisers.
