Relative Pride in the Street Life

As I begin reading Part 3 of Sidewalk I have come to two important realizations: first, the homeless people are still too proud to admit that they’re homeless and second, Mitchell Duneier is still too proud to think we trust his subjects in the study. If you’re wondering why this is being written at 2 in the morning, it’s because I just watched four hours of slam poetry on YouTube and I’m too proud to get a low grade on my blog posts. Pride as it turns out, is in everyone.

I had noticed this pride issue earlier in the book when the panhandlers of Sixth Avenue said they would never reduce themselves to looking through trash for a living. The scavengers who looked through trash for a living said they would never reduce themselves to begging. In the more recent chapters I noticed an emphasis on this pride, as the sidewalk dwellers don’t think of themselves as homeless people.

As this book continues there is an emphasis on how the choice to live on the streets comes about. “To understand the act of sleeping on the sidewalks, rather than assuming a person is making a trade-off between drugs and a room, it is always useful to consider a person’s overall logic…” (page 162). This brings powerful insight into the sidewalk world and human judgment. Why are people from the higher classes so proud that they immediately think someone on the street has no money, no education or intelligence, no other option, and is inevitable on drugs? If we could pay attention for a bit longer, we’d maybe see them as they see themselves: “street entrepreneurs” (page 172).

The pride in Duneier however, was shown in a single sentence: “”In one month he saved one thousand dollars for the winter and for a trip to see his mother in Florida. (I counted the money)” (page 164). Why did he have to add that he counted the money? Did he think that we wouldn’t believe if the amount based on just Grady’s testimony? Probably. The most devastating part of it all is that most people reading the book would have done exactly as Duneier expected, they wouldn’t believe the amount without upper-class/white testimony.

Pride as it turns out, is racist and classist.

Binge (noun): a short period devoted to indulging in an activity in excess.