TPPM Watts: (18) You groove

[Paul Nightingale]

The text's "you" returns, the "you" positioned in the scene, in the
middle of the action (cf the "you" approached earlier by the
cop-with-a-gun).

The daily routine of this "you" seeking work is a quest that is its own
end, "because they don't seem to be [hiring] in Watts".

Cf the whites cruising the Strip for weekend action, "unaware that they
and their search which will end, usually, unfulfilled, are the only
action in town". The same distinction is made between "Watts kids"
seeking "some calm, some relaxation" in drink, and "white kid[s] ...
conditioned to believe so much in escape" via hallucinatory drugs.

Cf also the note of compulsion that attends the commuters' journey each
day: "so many whites must drive [the Harbor Freeway] at least twice
every working day". If the black daily routine sees them trapped by
unemployment and racist cops/personnel staff, whites are themselves
trapped by employment--see #19 on "the little man".

Subsequently, negotiating hostile cops is juxtaposed to the workplace
interview, "the white faces of personnel men, their uniform glance of
suspicion, their automatic smiles [and] polite put-downs". Here,
information/knowledge is power, of course--but power is about to be
demystified in the passage dealing with "the little man".