TPPM Watts: (21) Different species of cop

[Paul Nightingale]

"Usually--as in the Deadwyler incident--it is the younger cop of the
pair who's more troublesome. Most Watts kids are hip to what's going on
in this rookie's head ..."

Cf: "A Watts kid knows more of what goes on inside white heads than
possibly whites do themselves."

What is interesting about this lengthy passage, describing the way "you"
learns to negotiate interactions with cops, is the way it both follows
on from the preceding section ("the cop" becoming inseparable from "the
little man") and also returns the reader to the first usage of "you",
the first time "you" were confronted by a cop with a gun. The "you" who
is the NY reader is no longer a tourist, but the text chooses this
moment to return him to the scene of his first appearance as a tourist
(bringing in another, parenthetical, reference to "the Deadwyler
incident" for emphasis.

The earlier image, derived from media coverage of newsworthy events, in
which white cop confronts black driver, has now been replaced by a more
detailed account of how "you" must learn to survive: "You must
anticipate how the talk is going to go. It's something you pick up quite
young, same as you learn the different species of cop."

Hence, the passage describes an ongoing affair, a relationship that has
evolved ...

Cf: "Like after you have driven, say, down to Torrance or Long Beach or
wherever it is they're hiring ..."

Or: "So you groove instead down the freeway, maybe wondering when some
cop is going to stop you ..."

Earlier, the text juxtaposed Watts poverty to the Watts Tower: the myth
of a culture of poverty was quickly stifled by the celebration of
creativity in unlikely circumstances. The way "you" now deals with
"different species of cop" is also a kind of celebration.

Paul Mackin wrote earlier, and I said I'd get back to it:

"So . . . can we not take the denoument of the Watts essay--the
seemingly inevitable failure to achieve racial harmony--as a metonomy
for the failure of the gospel of progress in general--the gospel of
progress as rooted in the Enlightenment.  I certainly think we can."

Well, I'm not so sure we can describe the Watts essay as pessimistic,
which is the point I've been trying to make here (and also previously in
this introduction). What was pessimistic in the mid-1960s was, eg, the
culture-of-poverty theorists, against whom the Watts essay has been set.
(And you could probably argue that Enlightenment optimism was often
elitist and, consequently, quite pessimistic itself).