GRGR(29): Profiling

[Jeremy Osner]

p. 651 "And the data happen to hump up in poor sections, Jewish
sections, drug, homosexual, prostitute, and magic [:-)] sections of the
capital."

Reading this I can't help but think about the NJ highway patrol's
defence of what they call "racial profiling". Of course there were
equivalent, probably more blatant, phenomena when P was writing the
passage. I'm especially intrigued by the line on p. 652, "Look at all
the propaganda." I initially read this with a certain emphasis, as if it
were an NJ highway patrol public relations executive saying, "Just look
at the statistics" and then going on to point out how 63, or 37 percent
of Negroes and Spics stopped for speeding violations are found to be
carrying contraband or narcotics. But I think it might also be the sort
of sentence that is meant to be read in two voices simultaneously, look
at how it says "propaganda" instead of "statistics".

A-and also, just read *this* passage out loud: "But the urchin has
already left town, gone to Hamburg, traded Byron to a Reeperbahn
*prostitute* so he can *shoot up some morphine* -- the young woman's
customer tonight is a cost-accountant who likes to have light bulbs
*screwed into his asshole*, and this john has also brought a little
*hashish to smoke*,..." By emphasizing these words, the words which I
think even unitalicized our Puritan eyes might jump to, P makes explicit
a voyeuristic quality of our reading [sorry if by twice using "our" I
have insinuated my self or you into a group in which neither of us
belongs]

J