“On the Run” is, first and foremost, a remarkable feat of reporting. Its author, Alice Goffman, a young sociologist, had an ethnography assignment for an undergraduate class at the University of Pennsylvania, and she, the daughter of the renowned sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-82), didn’t take it lightly. She hung out with an older African-American food service worker at the university, and one thing led to another. Before long, she had moved into an apartment in a poor, largely black neighborhood in Philadelphia, her housemate a young man whose family lived down the block. Goffman became such a part of the fabric of the community that she was harassed by the police, witnessed someone getting pistol-whipped, was even set up on a blind date. And all the while she was furiously taking notes, trying to make sense of what at first glance appeared to be utter chaos going on around her.
But where others might see bedlam, Goffman finds patterns, even logic. When it becomes clear that many of the young men won’t go to the public hospital for treatment — she recounts watching one of them prone on his kitchen table, having a bullet removed from his thigh by a neighbor who is a nurse’s aide — Goffman begins to ask questions and learns that the police often loiter near the emergency room, scanning the visitors list, looking to arrest anyone who might have an outstanding warrant. This could be a metaphor for what Goffman comes to realize: The young men in this community feel hunted. Their mental energy is spent trying to elude the police, so much so that they impart words of advice to younger siblings, including this from a man Goffman calls Chuck, speaking to his 12-year-old brother: “You hear them coming, that’s it, you gone. Period. ’Cause whoever they looking for, even if it’s not you, nine times out of 10 they’ll probably book you.” Chuck’s warnings, it becomes clear, have merit. In fact, Chuck’s brother receives three years’ probation when he’s given a ride to school in what turns out to be a stolen car. Many of the men Goffman encounters have recently been released from prison and are on parole. And as she points out, our parole and probation system is set up for people to fail. She introduces us to Alex, whose parole stipulations forbid him to visit his old neighborhood or be out past curfew. It’s as if the system is just waiting for his first misstep, ready to pounce.
“On the Run” serves as a kind of coda to our war on drugs, an effort whose very rhetoric suggested it was us against them. The criminal justice system became a kind of invading force, aimed mostly at young black men. There was, of course, the inexplicable sentencing disparity between those caught with powdered cocaine and those caught with crack cocaine. States were emboldened to be equally punitive.In Illinois, for instance, the Legislature passed a law that automatically transferred a juvenile to adult court if caught with drugs within 1,000 feet of a public housing complex — a law clearly directed at African-American teenagers. The war on drugs mangled, if not destroyed, any trust between residents of distressed urban communities and the authorities. And when we speak of the authorities, it’s the police who on a day-to-day basis must contend with the rubble left behind from more than two decades of disturbingly misguided public policy. Goffman describes how “a climate of fear and suspicion pervades everyday life,” with the result that “a new social fabric is emerging under the threat of confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust and the paranoiac practices of secrecy, evasion and unpredictability.” To her credit, she didn’t set out with this notion; rather, it’s where she landed after six years of up-close observation.
Goffman spent her time in a Philadelphia community she calls 6th Street, which consists of a commercial strip and five residential blocks. There she came to know the locals intimately, not only the young men but also their girlfriends and families. She became so embedded in the community that she witnessed 24 police raids, including one in which she herself was handcuffed. Her guide is a man in his 20s she calls Mike (Goffman changed everyone’s name), who introduces her to friends as his adopted sister. Mike has a low-paying warehouse job and supplements his income by selling crack, getting in and out of trouble with the law. Like the others we meet, he’s neither hero nor villain. He’s simply trying to get by.
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The level of detail in this book and Goffman’s ability to understand her subjects’ motivations are astonishing — and riveting. Indeed, it’s a power of “On the Run” that her insights and conclusions feel so honest to what she’s seen and heard. She depicts a community where trust has evaporated, where young men like Mike often avoid girlfriends for fear that the women, for their own reasons, might turn their paramours in. And
“On the Run” is, first and foremost, a remarkable feat of reporting. Its author, Alice Goffman, a young sociologist, had an ethnography assignment for an undergraduate class at the University of Pennsylvania, and she, the daughter of the renowned sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-82), didn’t take it lightly. She hung out with an older African-American food service worker at the university, and one thing led to another. Before long, she had moved into an apartment in a poor, largely black neighborhood in Philadelphia, her housemate a young man whose family lived down the block. Goffman became such a part of the fabric of the community that she was harassed by the police, witnessed someone getting pistol-whipped, was even set up on a blind date. And all the while she was furiously taking notes, trying to make sense of what at first glance appeared to be utter chaos going on around her. But where others might see bedlam, Goffman finds patterns, even logic. When it becomes clear that many of the young men won’t go to the public hospital for treatment — she recounts watching one of them prone on his kitchen table, having a bullet removed from his thigh by a neighbor who is a nurse’s aide — Goffman begins to ask questions and learns that the police often loiter near the emergency room, scanning the visitors list, looking to arrest anyone who might have an outstanding warrant. This could be a metaphor for what Goffman comes to realize: The young men in this community feel hunted. Their mental energy is spent trying to elude the police, so much so that they impart words of advice to younger siblings, including this from a man Goffman calls Chuck, speaking to his 12-year-old brother: “You hear them coming, that’s it, you gone. Period. ’Cause whoever they looking for, even if it’s not you, nine times out of 10 they’ll probably book you.” Chuck’s warnings, it becomes clear, have merit. In fact, Chuck’s brother receives three years’ probation when he’s given a ride to school in what turns out to be a stolen car. Many of the men Goffman encounters have recently been released from prison and are on parole. And as she points out, our parole and probation system is set up for people to fail. She introduces us to Alex, whose parole stipulations forbid him to visit his old neighborhood or be out past curfew. It’s as if the system is just waiting for his first misstep, ready to pounce. “On the Run” serves as a kind of coda to our war on drugs, an effort whose very rhetoric suggested it was us against them. The criminal justice system became a kind of invading force, aimed mostly at young black men. There was, of course, the inexplicable sentencing disparity between those caught with powdered cocaine and those caught with crack cocaine. States were emboldened to be equally punitive.In Illinois, for instance, the Legislature passed a law that automatically transferred a juvenile to adult court if caught with drugs within 1,000 feet of a public housing complex — a law clearly directed at African-American teenagers. The war on drugs mangled, if not destroyed, any trust between residents of distressed urban communities and the authorities. And when we speak of the authorities, it’s the police who on a day-to-day basis must contend with the rubble left behind from more than two decades of disturbingly misguided public policy. Goffman describes how “a climate of fear and suspicion pervades everyday life,” with the result that “a new social fabric is emerging under the threat of confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust and the paranoiac practices of secrecy, evasion and unpredictability.” To her credit, she didn’t set out with this notion; rather, it’s where she landed after six years of up-close observation. Goffman spent her time in a Philadelphia community she calls 6th Street, which consists of a commercial strip and five residential blocks. There she came to know the locals intimately, not only the young men but also their girlfriends and families. She became so embedded in the community that she witnessed 24 police raids, including one in which she herself was handcuffed. Her guide is a man in his 20s she calls Mike (Goffman changed everyone’s name), who introduces her to friends as his adopted sister. Mike has a low-paying warehouse job and supplements his income by selling crack, getting in and out of trouble with the law. Like the others we meet, he’s neither hero nor villain. He’s simply trying to get by. Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story The level of detail in this book and Goffman’s ability to understand her subjects’ motivations are astonishing — and riveting. Indeed, it’s a power of “On the Run” that her insights and conclusions feel so honest to what she’s seen and heard. She depicts a community where trust has evaporated, where young men like Mike often avoid girlfriends for fear that the women, for their own reasons, might turn their paramours in. And