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[ 97 ] 5 “Dummy Smart” Misrecognition, Acting Out, and “Going Dumb” In attempting to maintain the existing order, the powerful commit crimes of control. . . . At the same time, oppressed people engage in . . . crimes of resistance. —Meda Chesney-Lind and Randall G. Shelden, Girls, Delinquency, and Juvenile Justice, 1992 It’s a war going on The ghetto is a cage They only give you two choices Be a rebel or a slave —Dead Prez, “Turn off the Radio,” 2002 Ronny was called in for a job interview at Carrows, a chain restaurant that served $9.99 sirloin steak and shrimp. He called me up, asking for help.1 I lenthimacrispwhitedressshirt,whichIhadpurchasedatadiscountstore when I worked as a server at a steak house during my undergraduate years. I convinced Ronny to wear fitted khakis, rather than his customary baggy jeans. He agreed, with the condition that he would wear his white Nike Air Force Ones, a popular basketball shoe at the time. These shoes had been in andoutofstyleintheurbansettingsincetheearly1980s.By2002,afamous “Dummy Smart” [ 98 ] rapper, Nelly, created a popular song named “Air Force Ones.” Around this time,famousbasketballplayerssuchasKobeBryantworetheseshoesduring games and advertised for Nike. Black and Latino youths in Oakland gravitated to these shoes, sometimes even wearing them to more formal eventssuchashighschoolproms,quinceañeras(coming-of-agepartiesfor girls turning fifteen, celebrated in many Latino cultures), and weddings. I asked Ronny why he insisted on wearing these shoes in a professional setting .Hereplied,“Becauseprofessionalswearthem.” Many of the boys believed that they had a clear sense of what courteous , professional, and “good” behavior was. Despite their attempts to present themselves with good manners and good morals, their idea of professional behavior did not match mainstream ideas of professional behavior. This in turn created what I refer to as misrecognition. When the boys displayed a genuine interest in “going legit,” getting a job or doing well in school, adults often could not recognize their positive attempts and sometimes interpreted them as rude or malicious acts and therefore criminalized them. The boys had grown up in an environment which had deprived them of the social and cultural capital that they needed to progress in school and the labor market. Therefore, they developed their own alternative social and cultural capital, which they used to survive poverty, persist in a violent and punitive social ecology, prevent violence, avoid incarceration , and attempt to fit into mainstream institutions. Borrowing from philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s notion of “organic intellectuals”2 —those individuals who come from the marginalized conditions that they write about and study—I call the creative social and cultural capital that the boys developed in response to being prevented from acquiring capital to succeed in mainstream institutions organic capital. This organic capital was often misunderstood and misrecognized by mainstream institutions and was, in turn, criminalized. On the other hand, young people often used organic capital as a resilience strategy that allowed them to persist through neglect and exclusionary experiences. Education scholar Tara Yosso develops a framework for understanding and using the capital that marginalized communities develop, what she calls “community cultural wealth.”3 She argues that marginalized communities have always generated certain kinds of capital that have allowed them to survive and [18.118.145.114] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 04:13 GMT) “Dummy Smart” [ 99 ] resist. Sociologist Martín Sánchez-Jankowski has recently discussed poor people’s ability to organize their social world and maintain social order as “persistence.”4 According to Sánchez-Jankowski, contrary to the popular academic belief that poor people live in a disorganized world where they have a limited capacity to generate “collective efficacy”—the ability of a community to solve its own social problems—the urban poor shape their behaviors around making sense of and creating social order within a marginal context. Organic capital is the creative response that the boys in this study developed in the midst of blocked opportunity and criminalization . However, these creative responses, despite being well intentioned, were often not well received by mainstream institutions. The paradox that these marginalized young people faced was that the organic capital that they developed to negotiate conflict and organize their survival on the streets often did not translate well in a school or labor-market setting. Criminologist Yasser Payne argues that some marginalized Black youths, who have been excluded from mainstream institutions , find affirmation, fulfillment, and resilience in practices associated with street life. These practices, according to Payne, provide young men with “sites of resilience,” spaces where they feel empowered and affirmed.5...