The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 34 (2023)

Copyright © 2023 The Japanese Association for American Studies. All rights reserved.

Informal Mediation on the Street:
An Ethnographic Exploration of Discrimination andDivision within Muslim Communities in Harlem
Yutaka NAKAMURA*
In this paper, I describe in the manner of ethnography several events
at which confrontations between African American Muslims and African
Muslims took place in New York City in 2004. These events seemingly
indicate a sense of resentment between the two ethnic groups. To theeyes of outside observers, it may look as if it were a clash between two
ethnic communities. The matter is, however, not as simple as it appears.
By narrating several diﬀerent episodes, I ﬁrst identify the moments of
discrimination in the narratives of several African American Muslims andexamine the ways in which they diﬀerentiate themselves from African aswell as Arab Muslims. I argue that often invoked in their diﬀerentiation
process are diﬀerences in appearances and language expressions. I thendescribe two other episodes that serve as counterpoints to the story I
constructed through the preceding episodes. My aim is to demonstrate
how African American Muslims constructed African Muslims as “others”
through their narratives but, at the same time, deconstructed them as suchthrough their actions. By focusing on exceptional moments in which an
African American Muslim man tried to mediate possible conﬂicts, the paper
challenges constructivists’ assumptions of collective identity and diﬀerence.

INTRODUCTION
It’s early on a Friday afternoon in Harlem, around 12:30 pm.1 The Adhan
or Islamic call to prayer sounds from loudspeakers outside a building andtravels melodiously across 116th Street. The Adhan composes a strange
and unique harmony, or perhaps rather a disharmony, with the noise of the* Tama Art University

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street—the chatter of people, the incessant engine sounds of the MTA city
buses, the hysterical honks from cars and “gypsy cabs” that cannot wait
to reach their destinations. Accompanying the voice reciting the Adhan isthe conspicuous aroma of incense sold on the street, intermingling with theappetizing smells of barbecued and fried chicken.
An African American Muslim man in his jeans and T-shirt greets a Wolof
and French speaking African Muslim man in his traditional clothes, “AsSalaam-Alaikum.”“Wa-Alaikum-As-Salaam,” the African brother greets him back.
It is a common greeting that takes place many times a day on 116th
Street. Yet there seems to be no further engagement between African
American Muslims and African Muslims in the neighborhood.
From the corner of 116th Street and Manhattan Avenue, Masjid Aqsa andMasjid Salam are clearly visible, both of which are led by African imams,
Imam Souleimane Konate and Imam Moustapha Soumahoro respectively.2
On Friday noon, both of the masjids are filled with the newly arrived
African immigrants. Those who cannot crowd themselves inside the masjids
form lines outside the buildings to listen to the khutba (sermon) and to pray.
While Muslims in general repeatedly emphasize the significance of theIslamic unity and the umma (community), no African American Muslims
appear to be in attendance at these two masjids. African American Muslims
in Harlem have their own separate mosques, such as Masjid Malcolm
Shabazz.
In the course of my fieldwork in New York City from 2002 to 2004, I
came to learn that communication between Africans and African Americans
in Harlem was indeed very limited. Furthermore, some African Americans
told me that that there was a strong sense of tension between those two
ethnic groups and that many members of both groups harbor deep-seatedresentment against the other. These local narratives residents told me reveal
significant conceptions of identification and differentiation for membersof both groups, resulting in possible intensification of ethnic conflicts that
could potentially trigger communal violence.
In academic literature, there is widespread acceptance of the conceptof social constructivism, which asserts that virtually all concepts ofcollective identities or collective entities should be understood as imaginedconstructions, involving particularized media, language, representation,and rituals. For example, Benedict Anderson explains that a rise of mass
media printed in vernacular language, circulated on a massive scale, andconsumed daily by individuals like a newly introduced, modern ritualINFORMAL MEDIATION ON THE STREET

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creates a particular shared mode of imagination in people.3 These modes ofimagination in turn cause individuals to form strong, emotional attachments
to people whom they have never met.
The consequences of the expression of this type of attachment when it
is very strong can be catastrophic. A person’s seemingly loving, caring,
and altruistic act of self-sacrifice for the broader group with whom they
identify can be both fatal for them and destructive to many others when one
conceives of their own death as collectively meaningful—perhaps, evenpart of destiny. Over the last two centuries, countless millions of people,
from the American Revolutionary War to the Second World War, from the
French Revolutionary War to The Yugoslav War, have willingly sacrificed
their own lives out of their imagined fraternity with particular other people.
Anderson observed: “If nation-states are widely conceded to be ‘new’ and‘historical,’ the nations to which they give political expression always loom
out of an immemorial past, and, still more important, glide into a limitlessfuture. It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny.”4
Many scholars who embrace this constructivist view of what is
considered communal and are responsible for its widespread acceptanceview the process of creating identity and difference to be the productof multiple contributory factors. Those factors include the influence ofrepresentations,5 constructions of identity and the undertaking collective
actions,6 the politics of recognition,7 the politics of identity,8 and “nonconscious” dispositions such as “habitus.”9 Vernacular identities andcategorizations regarding race, ethnicity, religion, and class are understoodto have a direct and almost immediate impact on individuals’ actions. For
Anderson, “the magic of nationalism” is performed through a persons’consuming of printed materials (newspapers and novels) and confirmedby the language of everyday life, which together determine the nature andcourse of one’s identity.
The assumptions held by Anderson and other constructivists closely
resemble those of such anthropologists as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Marcel
Mauss, who emphasized the force and effectiveness of symbols in theirstudy of magic in traditional cultures.10 Magic, for them, is only possible
through the sorcerer’s articulation of unfathomed events that could cause
anxiety among the community; the sorcerer’s role here is to relieve if noteliminate the community’s anxiety by telling a story that would most likely
match and reinforce the community’s preexisting beliefs and pretend to
explain away the often unfathomable and unbearable reality.11 Their studies
reveal many aspects of collective identity and the value-making process

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which are significant in analyzing the relationship between an underlying
structure or institution and its force.
However, their research disregards important exceptional moments ofdeviation from expected behavior in which negotiation and counterpoint
work to reduce or even eliminate dominant forces of collective imagination,
identity, and differentiation. In other words, they do not address thetransformative and therapeutic aspect of human behavior which might give
us an idea about how to cope with the “routine violence” of discrimination/
assimilation, division/unity, and inclusion/exclusion.12
In this article, I will describe and analyze six episodes I recorded aspart of my ethnographic research relating to conflict and tension between
African American Muslims and African Muslims in Harlem. The first four
episodes represent evidence of resentment between these two groups, which
an outside observer may interpret as a clash between two ethnic groups.
However, what was going on was not nearly as simple as it appeared as the
final two episodes I recount will reveal.
The first four episodes involve incidents of discrimination by African
Americans against African immigrants. Through the narratives of several
African American Muslims, I examine the ways in which they differentiatethemselves from both African Muslims and Arab Muslims and havediscriminatory attitudes toward them. Differences in appearances andlanguage are often invoked in this differentiation process.
I will then describe two other episodes that serve as counterpoints tothe narrative of unnuanced discrimination I constructed in the preceding
four episodes. I seek to demonstrate how African American Muslims’
conceptions of African Muslims as “others” are constructed in the
narratives they related to me; yet, at the same time, they are deconstructed
through the individuals’ actual deeds. While many of the statements
employed by the African American Muslims to differentiate African
Muslims as “others” seem to be based on apparent consensus and belief ofAfrican Americans, they do not serve as a magic talisman that necessarily
forces them to act within that system of belief.
Before recounting and analyzing these episodes, I will briefly sketch
the history of Harlem and the geopolitical context of the neighborhood, inwhich many newly arrived African immigrants and many long-time African
American residents spend their everyday lives.

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A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF “HARLEM”
Harlem is not only the name of a neighborhood in Manhattan, but alsoa term that stands for every ghetto in the United States. The pain andsuffering, the joy and creativity, the present and future, and perhaps more
importantly the histories of ghettos all across the country are encompassedby the term Harlem.13
As Harlem became known a hundred years ago as the capital of Black
America, it gained its fame through both the mass media and wordof mouth. The term Harlem evokes certain images and has particularimplications. To some, it is a site of politics (of race as well as ofclass). Cultural anthropologist John L. Jackson describes how politicalcommentators’ questions such as “What would people in Harlem think?”
are misguided attempts to use the word Harlem to represent a supposedly
unified and monolithic community of mostly lower-class African
Americans.14
To others, Harlem is a site of tourism and entertainment, where peopleof any racial or ethnic background line up in front of churches to listen toGospel music and dine at soul food restaurants where they can enjoy what
used to be the particular food for African Americans in Southern states. It
is a place where the Harlem Renaissance cultural movement took place inthe 1920s and 1930s and where revolutionaries once came to speak. Today,
Harlem is subject to encroaching gentrification.
Yet to others, Harlem is a site of social illness, whose image aligns witha collective perception of a certain race and class. and thereby (re)produces
the infamous but yet ever recurring equation: Harlem is infested with drugs,
crime, and other social ills, is Black, is underclass, is dangerous, is chaotic,
is violent, is inhumane, and so on. No matter how hard constructivists try
to “deconstruct” the ways these equations define the identity of Harlem,
their relevance is sustained by the unrestrained shifting of the definitionof particular terms from their original meaning.15 I shall come back to thisissue of persistent, vernacular equations that are sustained by everyday
beliefs. Suffice it say here that the copula “is” in these defining formulas
conjoins elements that belong to radically different categories, but theequations, at once, fit and are confirmed by the vernacular use of the term
“Harlem” in America.
The images and implications attached to the equation, though certainly
not limited to the ones described above, have circulated around the world.
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City. Thus, when Professor John L. Jackson, Jr., who is African American
once traveled to Jamaica, locals he happened upon beckoned him to jointhem by calling to him: “Come, come, Harlem, come!”16
Harlem is also a highly historicized place. As Jackson correctly observes:“Much of Harlem is famous today almost exclusively because the argument
can be made that it (this store, this building, this brownstone) was famousin the past, way back ‘when Harlem was in vogue.’ This all was Harlem,a wasness that tethers Harlem to another time altogether.”17 The food, themusic, the drug businesses, the crack houses, the cultures, and even thecelebrities were once famous. Jackson states: “This fetishized connection
between Harlem and its past is the first point to stress about a location
where notoriety is contingent on what the place used to be, on connections
between the present and the once-glorious past.”18
But Harlem is neither a monolith nor symbolic destination that exists
only in the past. One of the anthropologists’ tasks is to reveal the various
levels of diversity within Harlem, a place which is often narrated as asingle, coherent Black neighborhood, and show how different groupsinteract with each other in the diverse Harlem community today.
EPISODE 1: ENCOUNTERING HAMID
On a Friday afternoon, I walked past Masjid Aqsa, went eastward along
116th Street, and entered the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz. The building,whose round green roof stands out among the relatively low-rise buildingsthat surround it, occupies the corner of 116th Street and Malcolm X
Boulevard (Lenox Avenue). Inside the masjid on the third floor, there werealready about eighty Muslim men sitting on the carpeted floor. In the cornernear the entrance, about fifteen women and several children were sitting on
chairs. As I entered, James, a large man in his forties, ushered me to a backcorner of the room, where several old men and a few other visitors weresitting on the chairs.
After a while, a young African American man came to the front, brought
the palms of his hands to his ears, and beautifully sang the Adhan. It was
bluesy and soulful. Then the imam of this masjid entered and began giving
his khutba at the front. As the imam was speaking, more men showed up,
made short prayer on their own, and then sat down on the floor with theother men. Some men were dressed casually—jeans and T-shirts. Others
wore business suits with ties. They all sat there quietly.
As the imam finished talking and turned to face the same direction as theINFORMAL MEDIATION ON THE STREET

143

congregation was facing, people stood up. Men were now standing shoulder
to shoulder, facing the east corner. The imam waited until the ranks werein order, and then began salat (ritual prayer). “Allah akbar,” he called, andeverybody responded in kind.
After salat, an old African American man who was sitting in front ofme took me downstairs to a room on the first floor, where lunch was being
served buffet style. About forty people were in the room, all of whomwere African Americans except me. There were both men and women, but
mostly men. Although I was starving, I worried that if I ate I would not
be able to talk to people so only ordered fruit juice and began conversing
with others. After several short interactions, the old man introduced me to acalm-looking man in his forties.
The man’s name was Hamid, who I learned ran a barbershop andconstruction business in Harlem. Hamid looked young but moved rather
slowly. His lips were very dried, and his eyes looked swollen. I introduced
myself and told him that I had come from Japan to learn about therelationship between Harlem and Islam. He seemed to be interested in
my presence and was willing to talk to me. He sat down next to me rather
sluggishly. I noticed there was a white paper band around his right-handwrist. He said that he recently had a stroke and was released from hospitala few days before. “I have to move slow,” he said, “’cause they put me on awhole lot of medication, you know. I’m still feeling kind of weak.”
I was eager to talk to Hamid, but at the same time did not want to botherhim with my many questions when he was feeling weak. Nevertheless, hebegan talking. He did not flood me with many words; rather, he seemed
to be searching for the right words to say. Or perhaps he was carefully
choosing what would be considered correct English phrases for a collegeeducated, non-native English speaker like me to be able to comprehend
what he really meant to say.
Hamid was born in Harlem and raised by Muslim parents, who wereactive members of the Nation of Islam. “I was born into the Nation,” hesaid. And he was raised and trained within the Nation’s circle, serving as
captain of the Junior Fruit of Islam when he was younger.19
After chatting briefly, he said something that struck me. “You know,
religion and culture are two different things,” he said. “You can’t confuse
those two.” For a moment, I did not know what he meant. Nor did I know
how to respond to him. The only thing I could think to do was to wait for
his next words.
“Sometimes you see people in African clothes or Arab clothes,” Hamid

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continued. “You know, the type of clothes that look like a dress?” He madea slight gesture to indicate what he meant and looked at me to see if I
understood. As I nodded, he kept talking. “I look at them like, ‘Come on!’As long as I’m in New York, as long as I’m in the United States, I will justwear my regular clothes, you know. If I go to the desert in the Middle Eastor Africa, maybe I will wear them [African or Arab clothes]. But as long as
I’m here, there’s no point to it.” He articulated the sentences word by word.
He was constantly checking to see if I understood him or if I was convincedby his words.
“Sometimes they wear that type of clothes and think they are good
Muslims,” Hamid continued. “The same thing with a beard. Some people
think people with a long beard are good Muslims. They say, ‘Oh, you
don’t have a long beard and you think you are Muslim?’ You know what
I tell them? I tell them, it’s got nothing to do with Islam. People with along beard can be serial killers. You understand? Wearing a certain typeof clothes or having a long beard is something to do with culture. It has
nothing to do with Islam. Sometimes people think they have to go to theMiddle East or Africa to become a good Muslim.”“No matter what they say, I love America. I prefer to stay here. I don’t
like to travel outside of America. There is a freedom of speech and afreedom of belief in this country. I’m not saying America doesn’t haveproblems. It has many problems. But it also has a freedom whereas many
countries in the Middle East or Africa don’t.”
As Hamid talked, he became distracted many times, looking away atpeople walking by. He said he could not focus very well because of theprescription medication he was taking. People in the dining area were
finishing their conversations and starting to leave. A sharp looking man,
who was serving the buffet in the center of the room, started cleaning up
the large plates that had held fried chicken, fried fish, french fries, rice,and bread. Every move he made was quick and sharp and looked abrupt,
creating a striking contrast with Hamid. It was time for us to leave theroom, too.
“You should get in touch with the MSA, the Muslim Students
Association. Columbia [University] or City College may have one,” hesaid, as he stood up from the chair. “But,” he added jokingly with a giggle,“try to stay away from those weird groups.” He did not specify what
he was referring to by “those weird groups,” but it was apparent that hemeant to indicate groups which might appear to some to be anti-American,
revolutionary, or terrorist-like.

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Clothing and Appearance
Hamid’s words echoed in my mind for quite some time. It was obviousthat Hamid, as an African American Muslim, sought to distinguish himself
from African Muslims and Arab Muslims. However, the way in which
he tried to do so was noteworthy. Hamid invoked what he conceived ascultural elements such as beards and clothes for differentiation. For him,
regular clothes meant casual mainstream American clothes that many
people wore, such as jeans and T-shirts, the type of clothing Hamid himself
was wearing when we met.
As I came to learn later, Hamid was not the only one who made this kindof distinction. I was struck by innumerable accounts of such a distinction
made by African American Muslims. They repeatedly emphasized thedifferences between African American Muslims and African Muslims
or Arab Muslims, and they did so by referring to clothing, personal
appearance, and sometimes even language. For example, they argued
that so-called “Islamic looks” such as long beards or African and Middle
Eastern clothing had to do with culture, not religion, and that the ability to
speak Arabic was not at all a necessary condition for being a good Muslim.
Distinctions in clothing and appearance have particular meaning andsignificance as part of the construction of differentiation and distinctionin the cultural context of African American Muslims. Hamid and other
African American Muslims (both members of the Nation and others) have
employed clothing and appearances as symbols to draw a boundary anddistinction between themselves and others both within and without theAfrican American Muslim community. These visual markers, in turn, serve
as a significant factor in constructing their collective identities.
Members of the Nation of Islam have long been required to adhere
to a strict and distinctive dress code, with their uniforms and clean-cut
appearances, and are easily recognizable by their apparel. The Nation uses
formal clothes as a sign of identity and membership in the organization witha special uniform and bowtie or a formal suit and tie for men, and a whitedress and veil or a regular dress and veil for women. The clothing for themserves as a means to distinguish themselves from other African Americans;
but interestingly it at the same time incorporates some elements of theformal clothing traditions of the American middle and upper-middle class,such as suits, uniforms, formal wear, and bowties.
When the Nation’s longtime leader Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his
son Imam W. D. Muhammad assumed leadership and decided to reform

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the organization, eventually renaming it the American Society of Muslims.
Members who wanted to continue following the teachings of Elijah Muhammad
reconstituted the Nation as its own organization under new leadership in 1977.
Hamid had belonged to the Nation but began following W. D.
Muhammad after he took over the organization and initiated reforms.
As part of those reforms, W. D. Muhammad abandoned the clothing andpersonal appearance requirements and permitted followers to wear what is
considered to be regular American clothing.
The mainstream clothing distinguished members of the American
Society of Muslims from those of the Nation and enabled the organization
to assimilate into Sunni Islam. Some members still occasionally wear
suits, but they do not follow the strict dress code of the Nation. Manyof the followers of W. D. Muhammad also refer to distinctions between
their clothing and appearance and the Arab and African style of clothing
and appearance to indicate the differences between the newly arrived
immigrants and themselves, and thereby distinguishing the immigrants fromwhat they considered the mainstream of Islam.20
EPISODE 2: AN ATTACK ON AN AFRICAN IMMIGRANT MUSLIMAs I continued to reflect in the course of my fieldwork on the processesof differentiation between African Americans and African immigrants andon their relationship to each other, an event occurred on 116th Street that
seemed to illuminate the dynamics of their relationship. It revealed thepresence of potentially deep conflicts in the neighborhood.
On the morning of July 14th, 2003, I had an abominable headache andcould not get out of bed until noon. I left my apartment around 3:00 pm
and headed toward Masjid Salam, one of the African immigrant mosqueson 116th Street. I had been told earlier that there would be a joint protest
of both Africans and African Americans concerning an incident which hadtaken place on 116th Street about a week before.
When I arrived, there seemed to be no sign of any gathering. People were
scattered along the sidewalk here and there. I waited for about ten minutes,
but nothing really changed. Worried that they might have relocated theirprotest somewhere else, I asked a man standing in front of Masjid Salam if
he knew anything about the protest. He was looking around and smoking
a cigarette with a pack of Marlboros in his left hand. He said to me that he
was also waiting to join the protest himself and that he was not a Muslim,
but a Christian from Ethiopia.

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As we waited and talked, he began to explain the incident to me. “An
old man was attacked by young people,” the man said in a heavy accent. “Ihave kids. It’s scary, you know. The police don’t show up soon enough inthis neighborhood.” In his voice was a sense of fear that his children could
have been the victims, which coincided with his tone of accusation against
the perpetrator(s).
After another ten minutes, people started to gather. They were mainly
African Muslims, but there were also several African American Muslims,
whom I knew personally. Yellow, hand-written flyers were being distributedby the victim’s son, a tall, quiet man. He said his father was in an intensive
care unit and was expecting another operation on his nose.
I learned about the details of the incident from the flyer. A seventy-threeyear-old African immigrant Muslim man had been attacked in the early
evening of July 9th on 116th Street near Masjid Salam. According to theflyer, “He suffered broken nose, chin, multiple arm+shoulder fractures,a cut under his eye +brain hemorrhage. He was admitted to the Intensive
Care Unit and has had three operations.”21
Besides the brief description of the incident, the flyer also listed threedemands for the police:
1. Increased +more rapid police protection
2. The quick arrest+prosecution of the brutal youth gang responsible
for this+other violence.
3. Increased police sensitivity+regular meetings with community
leaders.22
Suddenly, a journalist from a local radio station appeared, holding a
microphone in his hand with a big tape recorder hanging from his shoulder.
He was a light-skinned African American man in his early-forties. He
introduced himself as David and gave his business card to just about
everybody there. “This is just to show you I am not with the FBI,” he saidjokingly, but nobody laughed.
The imam of Masjid Salam spoke with a heavy African accent. “Thisis not the first time,” he said. “There are many cases like this. We cannot
allow this anymore. If something happens to African Americans, Imam
Pasha of Masjid Malcolm Shabazz can do something about it because heis an American. We are Africans. We cannot do anything. We came here to
make some money. We don’t want troubles.”After a short while, people began walking toward the Precinct 28 police
station on 123rd Street. Some of them continued to distribute the flyers as
we walked. After we arrived at the police station around 4:30 pm, we were148

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led to a room inside the building. We were about eighty people—mostly
Africans, some African Americans, and a few whites. Roughly one third
were women. The room was too small for us, but people managed to crowd
themselves in and arrange enough chairs for many of the women there.
Five uniformed police officers, who were non-white, introduced
themselves, confidently explicated their daily tasks in detail, and proudly
talked about their positive accomplishments. Eventually, one of the officers
took charge and gave a long speech in which he presented his ideas that
he asserted would solve problems concerning street violence, the lack ofpolice officers, and the reluctance of the police to respond to the calls. I
summarize the gist of his speech in his own voice as follows:
We [the police] are not your enemy. Stop complaining and startcooperating. We have a meeting once a month on Wednesday here. Various
leaders come and participate in this meeting. Show up for this Wednesday
meeting. If you come in here on Saturday and get training for the police
auxiliary program, you can wear a police uniform and perform some of theroles of an officer. If half of you in this room can participate, we can place
many uniformed officers on 116th Street. If people realize that there are a
lot of uniformed officers on the street, we can prevent many of the crimes
beforehand. This attack case is not a special one. We should not stick to themistakes we made in the past and continue to complain about them. We
need to think about the future.
This community is our [the police officers’] community, too. The kids
who committed this crime were also the kids of our community. We need toprotect our community by ourselves.
The officer’s speech was met with a round of applause. Whenever hementioned the words “our community” and emphasized the unity between
the residents and the police, there was a strong sense of affirmation.
Whenever he said that they didn’t have to worry about getting arrested forviolating the immigration laws, Africans in the room applauded.
The protesters also voiced several issues, which I also quote in their own
words:“When Africans report to the police, it takes twenty minutes for thepolice to arrive.”“When African kids are playing, African American kids yell, ‘Go backto your fucking country’ at them.”“There are several abandoned buildings on 116th Street where people
are dealing drugs right now. Why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?”

INFORMAL MEDIATION ON THE STREET

149“After 9/11, it became okay to attack Muslims. We need to let people
know that it is not okay. We need to let them know that they can be introuble if they attack us.”23
But as the protestors voiced these serious concerns, it somehow sounded
as if they were merely complaining rather than seriously protesting,especially after the officer’s eloquent speech and the subsequent applause.
Shortly after 6:30 pm, the meeting ended. Many protesters claimed thatthe attack on the old African man was one of many frequent incidents andnot special. The victim’s son never spoke a word. He merely stood there
quietly the entire time.
As I walked out of the room, I saw Sister Aisha, an African American
Muslim woman whom I knew. She had years of experience in social
activism and was usually the one who would speak up and address issues
such as this one. But she was rather quiet today. It was unusual for her tobe quiet for a whole meeting. We walked together toward the main gate of
the precinct building filled with officers. She looked tired and disappointed.
She asked me what I thought of the whole protest. I started sharing my
impression, but before I could fully explain, she began talking. “I don’t
think this is going to work,” she said in a calm and soft voice. We werealready outside the precinct building, and I could barely hear her voiceover the noise of the street. I leaned forward to make sure I could hear her
correctly.
“We can’t take off our beautiful clothes and put on police uniforms,” shestated determinedly as she knitted her eyebrows as she always did when
she had something to say. “It’s important to live safely without changing
our clothes. It is important, Yutaka. If you go to a Jewish neighborhood, forinstance, you see those Jewish people in Jewish clothes living peacefully.
They don’t have to wear police uniforms to live peacefully.” She was
wearing an African style dress, which many African American womensometimes wear in everyday lives.
“What they’ve done today is going to bring about a rift between serious
Muslims and those who are not so serious.…We also have to think.… We
have a history of white police officers doing whatever they want to do inHarlem. If you look at it, there ain’ many Black or Asian officers, eventoday. They used to try recruiting me to the police. But I said no. I said no,
Yutaka. I just can’t do it. After seeing what they have done to the people inHarlem. I just can’t.… What they did today is not right. They did it at thewill of people. Not the will of Allah.… When you think about their history,

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Africans are the one who sold us to white people. They know this. Why do
you think the [African American] kids said what they said to the African
kids? There is a reason for that. There is a reason for everything. What
happened today also has a reason. It’s all by the will of Allah.”
The Police Uniform
Although it was never explicitly stated at the time of the protest, both
African Americans and the African immigrants knew that the accused
attackers were African American youths. The African imam distinguishedthe status of Africans from that of African Americans by referring to theparticular difficulties that African immigrants faced. At least one protester
mentioned the animosity between African youths and African American
youths. While some of the protesters were African Americans, there was a
subtle tension between those two ethnic groups.
As Aisha noted, the police uniform can take on at least two different
meanings for many long-term African American residents of Harlem.
On one hand, it is a symbol of state power both in terms of violence andcorruption. Police brutality is an issue that has been raised by community
leaders for many years, and yet it is still an everyday experience for many
Black residents of Harlem. On the other hand, the police uniform also
provides a twisted sense of security to certain people by its exhibition of
overwhelming authority and power, especially during nighttime when there
is a possibility of being assaulted or mugged.
The police officers’ welcoming the protesting residents into the precinct
is also noteworthy. The officers repeatedly used the term “community” andemphasized that they were in sync with the “community.” It appeared thatthe police officers did not really intend the meeting in the precinct room
to be an opportunity for the protesters to voice their concerns to the police.
Rather, the meeting seems to have been conceived as an opportunity forthe police to incorporate the residents into the fold of the law enforcement
agency.
EPISODE 3: ATTITUDE OF THE STREETA few days after the protest, I was at Hamid’s barbershop on 116th
Street. There were many people at the shop, chatting and waiting for their
hair to be done. Hamid suggested that we grab chairs, go outside, and talk.
Realizing he had to make a phone call, Hamid told me to go ahead andINFORMAL MEDIATION ON THE STREET

151

take a couple of chairs outside. I did so and held the chairs as I waited for
him to come out. I was looking forward to enjoying a hot summer day of
conversation with Hamid in Harlem.
Suddenly, a middle-aged African American woman walked toward me
and snatched one of my chairs. She did not say anything, but simply took
my chair, walked away from me, set it in front of the 99 cent store nextdoor, and sat down on it. Then, before I could do anything, an African
immigrant woman came over and said to me, “This is my chair.” Withouteven waiting for my response, she snatched the other chair from me andwalked inside the African store next door.
My mind went blank. After a moment and still taken aback, I did notknow what to do but to yell at her, “Hey!” It was ignored. I stood there
in utter amazement, like a fool on the street. I felt helpless. At this point,
Hamid came out. Seeing the expression on my face, he asked me what
happened.
“That lady just snatched the chair from me,” I told him, pointing toward
the African American woman sitting outside the 99 cent store.
Without even looking surprised or disturbed, Hamid walked straight tothe woman, who was now in the vernacular comfortably chilling on thechair, as if nothing had happened. After a brief exchange with her, Hamid
came back to me and said, “She is going to return the chair. Don’t worry.”I also asked about the second chair. Hamid’s verbal response to this was
not clear. But his facial expression and gesture somehow implied to me that
he did not want to talk about it at the moment.
“Is it always like this? That’s messed up,” I said to Hamid, still feelingsomewhat appalled. Clearly hearing this, the African American woman
looked at me and shrugged with a little smile on her face.
“Are you upset?” Hamid asked me. “Well, welcome to theneighborhood!”
The woman must have not known that I was a friend of Hamid. Seeing
me talking with Hamid, she came to us carrying a small hotdog and thechair. “Sorry about what happened,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude toyou,” she said and offered me a handshake. I felt ridiculous but thought that
I had no choice but to shake her hand.
“I am glad you experienced this,” Hamid told me a little later. “That is
the mentality in this community. You can’t really understand all about theprotest march to the precinct you just mentioned unless you understandthe mentality of this community. What happened [the assault] was bad,and I don’t agree with it. But let’s say when the lady tried to snatch your152

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chair, what would have happened if you resisted her and didn’t mean to but
accidentally hit her? She would say, ‘That man hit me.’ She wouldn’t talkabout her trying to steal your chair. Do you understand? People do whatever
they need to do to protect themselves, you know. Nevertheless, there are a
few things we can do. One of the things is to set up a place where we canhave a dialogue regularly.”
As he talked, the weather suddenly started to change; it started drizzling.
An African man in his white African clothes, carrying a table he used todisplay the African clothes, T-shirts, and scented oils he sold, walked up
in front of Hamid’s barbershop. There was a small space in front of thebarbershop where the building’s roof provided protection from the rain.
Without even looking at us, he started setting up his foldable table there in
front of us, and laid out his wares. Hamid simply watched him.
“For example, he’s just set up his table right there, right?” he said to me
in a low voice. “If you are a normal person, you don’t do that in front ofother people’s stores. He didn’t even say anything. But I don’t yell at him. I
will speak to him personally later and tell him nicely. If I make a fuss about
it, that will build up tension [between Africans and African Americans].”
I was not quite sure why Hamid was comparing this incident with the
African man and his table and the women’s snatching the chairs from mewith the assault case of the old African Muslim man. The man who set up
his table was African. One of the women who snatched a chair from me was
African American; the other was African. In the assault case, the “young
people” accused of the attack were identified as young African Americanmen. But Hamid seemed to be implying that there were common elements
likely underlying all three of the events that could help me understand thecontext for the attack on the old African man, assuming that the allegations
against the alleged perpetrators were in fact true. Hamid appeared to haveoffered the scenario of what might have happened if I had responded
physically and more assertively to the women who snatched the chairs fromme to help me understand the way of thinking and acting that may haveunderlain the youths’ assault on the old man (again assuming they wereindeed the attackers). It was only later that Hamid’s interpretation of theassault became clearer.
EPISODE 4: A BRIEF EXCHANGE AT THE BARBERSHOPAs Hamid and I were chatting in his barbershop on another day, an
African woman in a beautiful African gown walked in. She seemed to be

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153

looking for someone, but did not say a word.
“Hey! You dressed up! Are you getting married or something?” Hamid
asked her jokingly. It was his usual procedure. He would often talk to somestrangers, especially women, to compliment them and engage them inconversation.
“Yes, I am,” the woman said without showing any interest in continuing
the conversation.
“Get outta here! When?” Hamid said humorously, trying to continue thechatter. But the woman did not respond, continued to look around the room,and began to leave.
Hamid did not give up. “Sister! When are you getting married?” Hamid
asked again.
“Tomorrow,” answered the woman, apathetically.
Clearly realizing her disinterest, Hamid changed his question. “You arelooking for May, right? Do you want me to call her?” May was an African
Muslim woman, who worked at the shop.
“No,” the woman said and left the shop quickly.
After the woman left, Hamid reflected on what had just happened. “Didyou see the attitude of that lady?” Hamid said. He was clearly annoyed
although he did not show it to her. “Now, that is the attitude of Africans
toward African Americans. That’s what you gotta understand about theincident [the assault case]. I am not saying what they did was right, but if
you come to this community with that kind of attitude, you have to knowwhat they gonna do, especially those young kids. They’ll feel disrespected.
Do you understand what I am saying?”
Resentment between Africans and African Americans on the Street
There clearly was animosity between Hamid, an African American
Muslim man, and African immigrants. Hamid’s interpretation of the broader
underlying context for the assault was clear and unequivocal. While Hamid
said he did not agree with what he believed the youths had done to theAfrican man, he articulated that there was a reason for it. Hamid believedthat many newly arrived Africans exhibited a disrespectful attitude toward
African Americans, and that provided the context and background for theassault on the old man and for broader tension and conflict.
Hamid was not the only African American who recognized the tension
between Africans and African Americans. Many other African American
residents of Harlem also clearly acknowledged and articulated it to me.

154

YUTAKA NAKAMURAFor example, an African American scholar told me: “I would say aroundninety percent of the stores on 116th Street are owned and run by the
new-coming Africans.” He had lived in an apartment on 116th Street for along time and had seen the changes of the street. “There have been a large
number of Africans coming into this area of Harlem, and that is happening
without removing anyone who had lived in the area. So, it is like a clash of
cultures.… There is also a great amount of resentment toward one another.”
While there was an effort to create understanding between Africanmasjids and African American masjids, many African American residents
identified to me a general tone of resentment underlying the relationshipbetween the two groups.
EPISODE 5: CONFRONTING CONFLICT
About four months after the protest, I came by Hamid’s barbershop one
day and saw an African woman sitting on a chair inside. I greeted her, but
she did not respond. I walked to the small office space at the back of theshop to greet Hamid. Hamid said the woman was looking for a hairdresser
named May. Hamid offered some fruit to me and then the woman. She
did not seem to speak English but started eating the orange Hamid offeredwithout saying anything—without even changing her facial expression.
As we were eating the fruit, Maryam, May’s niece, walked past the shop.
Hamid suddenly ran outside and tried to catch her. He came back several
minutes later. He said he had asked Maryam where May was but that she
did not know. The woman looked as if she was giving up and was about toleave.
“Do you want me to go to May’s place and ask where she is?” Hamid
asked her slowly so that the woman could understand.
“No,” she said in a small voice and left.
As the woman left the store, Hamid and I were the only ones left at the
shop. Hamid started reflecting on what had just happened. “See what I
just did? I tried to find May for her, right? I am the only one who runs up
to May’s place and tells her, ‘Someone is looking for you.’ Some people
perceive it as weakness. To me, it is kindness. That’s why I always tell May,
‘They may smile at you, but don’t think for a minute that they are yourfriends.’ I saw some nasty things. They blame everything on her while she
is not here. The minute she walks out the door, they say nasty things about
her. It is a slave mentality.”“What do you mean ‘they’?” I asked him, slightly confused. “Who are

INFORMAL MEDIATION ON THE STREET

155‘they’?” I did not know to whom Hamid was referring when he said “they.”“People at the shop!” He answered immediately as if my question was
ignorant.
Not knowing at this point the ethnic composition of the other hairdressers
at the shop, I asked Hamid another naive question. “This is regardless of
African-American or African?” What I meant to ask was that whether
Hamid was referring to African American or African hairdressers at theshop when he said “they.”
Hamid looked confused. “No,” He responded slowly. “I am talking about
African Americans. They have the slave mentality. May is the only Africanat the shop.”“Really? I didn’t know that.”“Yup,” he said. “That’s why I tell her, ‘I don’t mean to hurt your feelings
or anything, but you gotta be careful. They may smile at you but don’t think
for a minute that they are your friends.’ That’s what I tell her.”
Then May came into the shop. As soon as she came in, she started
complaining about Jihad, an African American Muslim man who comanaged the barbershop with Hamid. “He called me and asked me formoney. He looked for me all over the place. He came to my place. When
you are Muslim, you are supposed to know you can’t do that. If you comelooking for me like that, people will say to you ‘Jihad was looking for you.’
He is crazy.” May was worried that people might start spreading rumor
that she and Jihad were romantically involved. Hamid, who had repeatedlyemphasized differences between African Americans and Africans andexpressed his resentment toward Africans, was now quietly listening toMay, an African woman.
After May finished complaining about Hamid’s friend and colleague
Jihad, she asked Hamid a personal question. She asked Hamid if he wasmarried and had children. Hamid did not answer the question seriously andtried to make a joke out of it. But as May kept asking the same question,
Hamid started answering it little by little.
“I have one [wife] in Virginia,” Hamid said playfully. “One in upstate.
One in uptown [Manhattan].” He was actually telling the truth in a way. But
he was divorced from two of them and was in the process of divorcing theother one.
“And you don’t love them anymore?” asked May.
“I love them all!” Hamid exclaimed.
“That’s not possible,” May objected politely. “You can only love one at atime. After you separate, you only like them.”

156

YUTAKA NAKAMURA“Oh, I love them all.” Hamid said quietly without giving it much thought.
“You know why I ask you this?” May continued. “Because I can’t love
my husband. I like him. But I don’t love him. I tried to be back with him,
but I can’t love him.” She started talking about the degrading circumstances
she was forced to endure with respect to her husband. She sounded as if she
was disgusted with the sense of disrespect with which he treated her.
“You are a nice person,” she said to Hamid. “You can talk to people.
Sometimes I say bad things to you, but the next day we can still talk, right?”
It was the first time I had ever heard May complimenting Hamid. Having
seen the lack of communication between Hamid and May, I had always
thought that they might not like each other. When they had communicatedbefore, the exchange between the two had been trivial if not hostile.
“Remember when I said that I would like to pray with my wife side byside,” Hamid said in response. “We pray side by side. I just can’t stand awoman who puts herself behind me. I can’t stand a woman who gives into the position. I wouldn’ learn anything from that type of person.” Hamid
slowly but assertively stated, as if to give his choice of words carefulconsideration. “Let me tell you something. That’s not a wife. That’s aslave.”“Thank you!” responded May, giving a big nod. “And you know, I am
here to work and send the money to my country. Some men come in and try
to talk to me [make sexual advances toward me]. What are they thinking? I
am not here to find a man. There are a lot of men in my country. I am here
to work. Some people buy expensive clothes. Me, I go to 125th Street andby $10 pants. Some people say, ‘Oh, May, you look good.’ I don’t care.”May usually wore jeans and shirts. I had never seen her in what Hamid
might have called African clothes. Perhaps it was because she worked as ahairdresser and needed to be in comfortable clothes when she worked. Or
perhaps because she wanted to save money as she claimed. Every time I
saw her at Hamid’s shop, she was always dressed casually.
CONCLUSION: EXCEPTIONAL MOMENTS AND MEDIATIONSContrary to what Hamid had expressed to me about his views toward
African Muslims, he played the role of mediating between African
Americans and African immigrants. He acted in a way that transcended theforces of collective identity. This is not to suggest that the conflicts between
the two different ethnic groups to which Hamid and May are considered tobelong were resolved or had disappeared. Nor do I intend to romanticize

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Hamid’s conciliatory and pacifist attitude. But this small sample of episodes
I have recounted above suggests the existence of countervailing forcesthat undermine the constructedness of collective identities and differences.
While Hamid’s narrative along with those of many other African American
Muslims in Harlem seemingly construct Africans as offensive “others,”
Hamid’s actions contravene such a reductive conclusion. Hamid worked tohelp May personally, mitigate resentment among both Africans and African
Americans, and thus help prevent further tension, conflict, and violence.
The above episodes also pose an epistemological question about theconceptions of discrimination and conflict. Many scholars have repeatedly
argued that differences, discrimination, and conflicts are always culturally
constructed. Michel Foucault, for one, explained that a discourse is not
merely a collection of words, but is a practice that shapes the object towhich it refers.24 And many anthropologists and other analysts concur withthis understanding. Charles L. Briggs, for example, drawing on the works ofFoucault as well as of Michael Silverstein, claims that narrative can be seen
as a process, through which “narrators and their audiences gain access to arange of metadiscursive practices for shaping social interactions as well as
the production and reception of discourse.”25
While I do acknowledge the forces of representation and discourse andtheir influence on various practices, I am dissatisfied with constructivists’relative disregard for exceptional moments for which narrative anddiscourse fail to fully account and thus are inadequate reference
points. I am not suggesting that discursive practices either do or do notconstruct group members’ perceptions of reality. Rather, I am simply
wary of constructivists’ often tacit assumption that discursive practices
always determine and dictate one’s actions to the same degree. To say
representational forces of language influence one’s actions is one thing.
To assume that they are always determinative of one’s actions in the samemanner is quite another.
Examining this issue from slightly different angle, Valentine Danielobserved succinctly “the uncanny resemblance that certain schoolsof constructivism bear to the essentializing impulses operating in
ethnicism, racism, and culturalism which they critique.”26 Pointing outthat constructivists themselves often erroneously essentialize what they
consider as “essentialist,” Daniel wrote: “[I]n the excitement to findnothing but constructions, there has been a flattening down of culture toa single dimension and a loss of perspective on the relative differences inresilience among the various cultural constructions as well as their relative

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latency….”27 While Daniel’s focus here is on different dimensions ofcultural constructions and on varying degrees to which such constructions
have force, he clearly recognizes the potential of subtle moments in which
cultural forces claimed to inexorably determine actions in fact meet their“counterpoint.”28 I am not arguing that there is always an a priori, steadycounterpoint to cultures, but if there are moments in which an action
contravenes the supposedly definitive forces of cultures, it is vital to capture
those moments through ethnography.
I will conclude this article with a final episode I recorded as an
ethnographer in Harlem. The scene, as in the previous episode I described,
conveys a subtle indication of an exceptional moment, in which Hamid’s
actions do not coincide with what he had persistently professed about
differences between African Americans and Africans. It also involves
another African American Muslim man named Ali, who was in his sixties,
with whom I also met regularly while I was conducting research in New
York City. Ali’s gesture as part of the episode was also inconsistent with
his usual attitude I would characterize as combative. Both Hamid and Ali
employed the language of conflict to articulate their resentment against
African Muslims, thereby constructing Africans as “others” and African
Americans as “selves” as essentially different beings. However, theiractions demonstrated something different in an exceptional moment ofconnection in the face of perceived otherness.
On a Wednesday, Ali and I headed for 116th Street after our regularmeeting. It was unusual for Ali to go to Harlem, because he always claimed
that he did not like to “hang around” in uptown. But Hamid had called
earlier and asked us to come and see him at his barbershop, which Ali and I
did.
We greeted one another and went outside to talk. The topic of ourconversation quickly became the changes in the neighborhood. Since Ali
had not come to 116th Street for a long time, he immediately pointed out
the increasing number of African immigrants. And he was not fully happy
about it.
“Lots of Africans are here now,” Ali said. “Those buildings used to beours. They even built their own mosques. That’s like me going to Africa andbuilding my own mosques, man.”For Ali, Africans’ building of their own mosques in the middle of Harlem
was a disrespectful act. According to him, they should attend the local
masjids, which were established and run by African Americans. Having
observed what Hamid thought of the African Muslim immigrants andINFORMAL MEDIATION ON THE STREET

159

his repeated emphasis on the differences between Africans and African
Americans, I automatically assumed that he would agree with Ali. But he
did not.
“No,” Hamid responded slowly and calmly. “But they [the African
immigrant Muslims] have been talked down to by the imam [of an African
American masjid]. He [the imam] kept saying some nasty things to them.
See, even I go in there [the predominantly African American mosque] justto make a prayer. I don’t go there to listen to his khutba. But he [the imam]
doesn’t like that. He has ego.”
Hamid could have agreed with Ali and said that it was indeed
disrespectful of Africans to build their own masjids. Instead, Hamid
blamed it on an African American imam, who had been active in one of thelocal mosques in Harlem. He said that it was that imam and other African
American mosque goers that eventually kicked out many African Muslims,
who used to come to the masjid. That was what had led the African
Muslims to build their own masjids.
Hamid was again playing the role of mediator. He described the culturalcontext in which African Muslims built their own masjids and counterposed
it to the resentment which Ali had exhibited.
“Oh, really?” Ali said, rather peacefully in a low voice. “I didn’ know
none of that.… Hmmm. I didn’ know that. That’s bad.” Ali was rubbing
his chin and seemed to be contemplating what to make of it. Ali’s response,
too, was remarkable to me at the time, because he had always employedstrong, militant language to articulate his attitudes and positions toward
the problems of Harlem. But now, talking to Hamid, his attitude shiftedstrikingly. He no longer exhibited an aggressive tone and defiant approach.
He was willing to listen to Hamid.
“Yes,” Hamid added, quietly. And he changed the subject and suggested
that we walk to the corner of 117th Street, where there was a newly built
apartment with a novel design. The sign on the wall read, “For Rent;
Luxury Apartment; Silverman,” followed by a phone number. According to
Hamid, who also ran a construction business in addition to the barbershop,
the selling price for a studio apartment in the new building was at least$300,000, and it would go up to a million dollars within six months.
“Twenty years ago, we paid five dollars per week, or ten dollars per week
for rent,” Hamid said.
Ali and Hamid then talked about their memories of life in 1960s and1970s Harlem. They both talked about times when they had been shot. Theyboth claimed that Harlem used to be a community in which people helped

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one another in the sixties, but that the crime rate rose in the late sixties, andthat fighting and conflicts became everyday occurrences in the seventies
and eighties. “There were a lot of people on the streets,” Hamid said, “andyou couldn’ see the other corner of the block. And unless you are from thatblock, you can’ really walk around. If you are from another block, people belike, ‘Who are you?’”
They then contrasted their memories of the neighborhood with how they
perceived it now. Hamid explained the changes in the neighborhood to
Ali. As we chatted on the street, a white woman came up from the subway
station and walked past us. A couple of Asian women and a few African
Americans in gentrified clothing carrying shopping bags with high-fashion
brand logos on them walked by as well. Each time newcomers walked pastus, Hamid said to Ali, “Look.” And we would watch them walk by.
“Remember how we used to make fun of people who live in that building
there?” Hamid asked Ali, discreetly pointing out the people who were about
to go inside another building. “We used to say, ‘How can people live inthat kind of building?’ Now, Caucasians live there.” The building was now
renovated, and the rent was much higher.
Ali pointed out that Columbia University purchased a property on
114th Street and was now renovating it. The building, Ali said, had beenused illegally as a crack house, and thus nobody could have protected theproperty from sale. “What bothers me is that there is no fear,” Ali claimed.
“You know, the fear. Like, for instance, if you go to Brooklyn, people areafraid of Brooklyn. It used to be like that here. But not anymore. That waswhen Harlem was real Harlem.” Brooklyn was only one example for Ali,and, of course, he meant a certain part of Brooklyn, not the entire area. He
persisted in emphasizing the lack of such fear. According to him, people
should be afraid of Harlem, the symbolic capital of Black culture. For him,
there was no sign of respect without such fear.
Hamid had once again performed the role of mediator here. In
restorative justice, the role of mediator or facilitator is to stand between
two conflicting parties and promote dialogue.29 Hamid had never trained
as a professional mediator. Nor was he conscious of such restorative
and therapeutic approaches to cases of conflict. Rather, he informallyintervened in potential conflicts in his everyday life. It is clear that he tried
to mitigate Ali’s animosity against Africans, but at the same time Hamid
avoided confronting Ali and talked peacefully with him about their sharedmemories, as if to confirm their brotherhood.
Ali left first, after exchanging greetings with Hamid and me. Then HamidINFORMAL MEDIATION ON THE STREET

161

walked me to Morningside Park. As we walked, Hamid pointed out that
there was a smell of gunpowder in the air. There certainly was a distinctive
odor, although we did not hear any gunshots.
NOTE
1

The stories I recount in this article are drawn mostly from the ﬁeldnotes I took as an
ethnographic researcher in New York City from the fall of 2002 to the summer of 2004.
For privacy and security purposes, I used pseudonyms for everyone except famous public
ﬁgures. Most of the data and episodes were previously used in my dissertation and published
as a book. But I have also continued my research and ﬁeldwork in Harlem and otherneighborhoods in New York, which led me to reframe the description theoretically. For myprevious work on the dynamics of 116th street, please see Yutaka Nakamura, Community
in Crisis: Language and Action among African-American Muslims in Harlem. (PhD Diss.,(Hitotsubashi University, 2008), especially chapter 3; Yutaka Nakamura, Zankyou noHarlem: Street ni ikiru Muslim-tachi no koe [Howling Harlem: Voices of Muslims on theStreet] (Tokyo: Editorial Republica, 2015), chapter 3.
2
Both masjids are no longer there. I was informed that they had to relocate because ofincreases in rent.
3
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reﬂections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006).
4
Ibid., 11–12.
5
Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
6
Alberto Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age(Cambridge University Press, 1996); Alberto Melucci, The Playing Self: Person andMeaning in the Planetary Society (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
7Charles Taylor and Amy Gutmann, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition’:An Essay (Princeton University Press, 1992).
8
W. E. Connolly, Identity/Diﬀerence: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox(Expanded Edition) (University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
9
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard
Nice (Harvard University Press, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice,trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge University Press, 1977).
10
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke
Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963) (especially “The Sorcerer and His Magic” and “TheEﬀectiveness of Symbol”); Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, trans. Robert Brain,(London: Routledge, 1972).
11
In thinking about the role of language in traditional magic and its implications, I am
inspired and inﬂuenced by James Siegel’s fascinating book on sorcery. See James T. Siegel,
Naming the Witch (Stanford University Press, 2006) (especially chapter 1 “The Truth ofSorcery”).
12“Routine violence” is the term I borrowed from Gyanendra Pandey. Rather than treating
violence as an extraordinary event, he reminds us that violence is embedded in the muchfamiliar institutions of our daily life and therefore routinely practiced. See Gyanendra
Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories (Stanford University Press, 2006).
13
Thus, in the famous song “Across 110th Street,” Bobby Womack sings: “In every city
you ﬁnd the same thing going down, / Harlem is the capital of every ghetto town. / Across110th Street, / Pimps trying to catch a woman that’s weak / Across 110th Street, / Pushers

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YUTAKA NAKAMURA

won’t let the junkie go free. / Across 110th Street, / A woman trying to catch a trick on thestreet. / Across 110th Street, / You can ﬁnd it all in the street” (Bobby Womack, “Across110th Street,” 1972, https://genius.com/Bobby-womack-across-110th-street-lyrics). For otherreferences, see e.g., David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (London: Penguin
Books, 1979); Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York 1890–
1930, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Ivan R Dee, 1996).
14
John L. Jackson, Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America(University of Chicago Press, 2001), 18.
15
See Shinichi Tsuji, Kokujin Ghetto No Ima Wo Ikiru [Harlem Speaks: Living the Present
Black Ghetto], (Tokyo: Shinjuku Shobou, 1995), 236. Having spent many years interviewing
Harlem residents, Tsuji observes and beautifully summarizes the manner in which Harlem
has been represented. “Harlem as a symbol. It is an intense sign. There always seems to be
two seemingly contrary meanings involved in it. Brightness and darkness. Glory and misery.
Hope and despair. Integrity and corruption. Numerous nicknames have been produced within
and outside Harlem. Uptown. Colony. Ghetto. Slum. Conﬁned town. The capital of Black
culture. The capital of American music. The city of dissipation. The underworld. The cancer
within the city. The tester of racial issues. A stronghold of Black movements. The hometown
of Langston Heughes, of Duke Ellington, of James Baldwin, and of Malcolm X. A fortress. A
prison. Beauty. Chaos…….” (English translation by Yutaka Nakamura.)
16
Jackson, Harlemworld, 18.
17
Ibid., 21.
18
Ibid., 22.
19
The Fruit of Islam is a section of the Nation of Islam, the members of which are to be
trained to carry out security-related tasks. Their training includes karate and other martialarts.
20
I use the term “followers” for convenience’s sake to indicate those who support ImamW. D. Muhammad and his organizational activities. The degree to which each of theindividuals follow Imam Muhammad varies, and the distinction between the followers andnon-followers is not always clear.
21
Here, I am quoting from the handwritten ﬂyer distributed on that day.
22
Again, the quotation is from the handwritten ﬂyer.
23
From my ﬁeldnote and memos.
24See, e.g., Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith(New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).
25
Charles Briggs, Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conﬂict, and Inequality (Oxford
University Press, 1996), 19 (emphasis in original).
26
Valentine E. Daniel, Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence(Princeton University Press, 1996), 13.
27
Ibid., 14.
28
Daniel talks about a “counterpoint to culture” in the ﬁnal chapter of his book Charred
Lullabies. The speciﬁc counterpoint Daniel describes is violence, but he does acknowledge
that violence is not the only counterpoint. See Ibid., chapter 7.
29
For explorations on restorative justice, see, for example, John Braithwaite, “Principles
of Restorative Justice,” in Restorative Justice and Criminal Justice: Competing orReconcilable Paradigms?, eds. A. von Hirsch, J. V. Roberts, A. E. Bottoms, K. Roach,and M. Schiﬀ, (London: Hart Publishing, 2003), 1–20; Mark Walters, Hate Crime andRestorative Justice: Exploring Causes, Repairing Harms (Oxford University Press, 2014);
Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: Restorative Justice for Our Times (Harrisonburg, VA:
MennoMedia, 2015); Howard Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice: Revised andUpdated (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015).