Clearly, there are more questions about situated and contextual knowledge than answers. The hustler playing three-card monte on 6^th Ave. may not have the same credentials, or letters behind his name as I do, but in that situation he certainly was my intellectual equal. This leads us to the question of validated knowledge. What knowledge becomes validated through discourse and what knowledge finds itself slotted way down the intellectual pole of hierarchy?

I don’t want to assume anything about my man’s life situation and how he ended up hustling tourists on a random corner of downtown Manhattan. But because I have had conversations with many students who have Masters and Doctorates, I can assume that, given the “right” opportunities, this dude could have easily taken a seat beside me in any course on Anti-Racism Education and spoken a narrative that was true, poignant, and insightful. Perhaps he would rather be out there “with the people” and making his ends meet by tricking people into a false sense of confidence. But I would wager this: this dude was probably never afforded the opportunity to see the path of higher education as an option.

These hustlers are clearly successful in their vein of employment. Like drug dealers and other criminal forms of occupation, I am agitated with questions regarding why some would choose this over conventional forms of making an honest living. And trust me, the aspect of illicit activity for a means of a living hits home closer than you think (Perhaps…no, never a blog, you’ll have to wait for the book!). The rationale for one to choose this life path over more “safer” options perplexes me. Because I don’t have the answer, despite reading numerous insights on criminology, I am left standing at a corner, still swayed into thinking that I am smarter than this dude facilitating a card game. I guess the only question that we can really answer in education is: How do we get to these brilliant men before they choose a life of the street?

One solution is for education to provide opportunities that validate differentiated knowledges. Hustlers are no dummies, so they couldn’t have been dummies in school. However, they were probably meant to feel that their brand of intellect, or street smarts, would never be valued in the space of a school.

So they left.

What if we were to somehow validate these forms of non-conventional knowledge so that these young men could see themselves in a promising light? Discourse makes it seem as though these black men abandon school. But by a simple observation of the hustler’s intellectual competence, it clearly seems that school, in some form or fashion, abandoned him. His fuck it moment didn’t come from him thinking that he wasn’t smart enough to “do school”. His moment of departure came from school’s insistence that he didn’t fit in with the program. It always takes two to tango.

But in this dance of inequity and injustice, the impetus is on education to take the lead, not the student. We can no longer afford to lose our money to three-card monte pros simply because school crabbed out on them long time ago…

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That is: certain knowledges are validated through conventional avenues of society and others are delegitimized.

This hustler with his three bent-up cards was ever much the sociologist, psychologist and intellectual technician as we were. And in his domain, his environment, we were in fact his subordinates. He was the professor of knowledge. His course: the School of Hard Knocks.

We circled back around the block and to our surprise we witnessed identical games set up down the block, on the next intersection and even across the street! As we came to our senses and started to watch other games as mere observers and not participants, the complex arrangement of the hustle became more and more clear. It wasn’t just the hustler who was playing the odds. It was damn near everyone at the “table” who was in on it!

The lady who so casually clung to my friend’s arm for comfort, she was part of the dynamic. The dude adjacent to her, who was betting wildly, winning and losing hand after hand, was in on it. They had set up an intricate environment meant to catch one sucker who thought he was smarter than some dude on the corner flipping cards. The elaborate scheme played right to the notion of “universal intelligence”.

I watched a guy lose two thousand dollars. When the situation started to get a little bit tense, someone from the street (yes, they even had colleagues on the street) hailed some type of “command”. Then, the “gambling table”, milk crates, cards, and people involved all scattered in different directions. This happened in a matter of moments. This was more ethnographic discovery. This “hustle” was more intricate than I had ever thought.

The reason why I scrambled for money and why my friend eventually bet, and lost, his money is because of the ghettoization of particular forms of knowledge. These street hustlers may have never graduated high school, but in their environment, they had a more enlightened tool belt of intellect than my graduate-educated peer and I did. They had long earned their PhD’s in street sense.

So the question becomes, how do we situate street smarts into the lexicon of traditional knowledge production and validation? Is this dude a one-trick pony who has only honed his skills in a particular vein and thus can only capitalize by a prescribed means? Or does the demonstration of his social, interpretive, and psychological skills suggest that he is on par with people who have attained their Masters in a particular discipline? Thus, are we also, as scholars, one-trick ponds in the chess game of life? Where do “street smarts” and attending The School of Hard Knocks fit into all this higher education thinking? To put in more succinctly, how does contextual experience become validated? This is a question that requires some reflection and compels some deliberation…

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To end my last week of 2015, I took a trip to New York City. The busy streets, sirens, and melting pot of cultures represent my deranged ideal of relaxation. Simply taking the subway and listening to groups’ talk was an ethnographic experiment in itself. To my surprise, a few of my closest friends made the trip down to the Big Apple to end the year with me. On New Year’s Eve, we broke up into groups as all of us had different agendas. One of my boys and I decided that it would be nice to simply go for a stroll through the touristy area of 34^th and 5^th, right close to Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building. As we walked and talked, a lady grabbed my friend and innocently asked him if he could, “be a witness” for a card game she was playing on the street.

It was 3 Card Monte.

He, or both of us, watched. She bet, about 100 bucks, picked the card that would vindicate her victory and won. While still holding his arm, she thanked him. A few more people were entertained and participating in this game, betting wild amounts of money, sometimes winning sometimes losing. We continued to watch for entertainment.

As we watched we, two graduate school students who also grew up in inner-cities, couldn’t help but feel that if we only bet some money we could ‘come up’. My friend and I followed the red diamond every single time the dealer dealt. In our minds, we would be rich by now. The woman and another man were feverishly gambling and seemed to always pick the wrong damn card. As I watched, I knew which card it was every time! I guess I chalked it up to my superior intellectual ability and incredibly focused vision.

I didn’t realize I had now taken a first row seat at the School of Hard Knocks.

After a few hands, the “dealer” asked me and my friend to help the betting girl by showing her the red diamond after he was finished mixing. Of course we did. Easy. He handed me money, but I was a little confused since I didn’t bet so I turned it down. I was about 6 for 6 at this point and the 20s in my pocket where starting to cry for some fellow brothers and sisters. What the hell, I thought. I pulled out some money, but I’m pretty stingy, so I hesitated for a bit before I decided to wager. I decided to watch a few more hands. The dealer nonchalantly invited us to engage. My friend seemed to be in the same head space as me, scrounging through his pockets to find some money to effortlessly double his cash. I paused, trying to understand the situation. I would say that I figured out the play but that would be a lie. I simply put my money back in my pocket as whispers from elders in my hood crept into my mind. If something appears too good to be true, it probably is…So I walked away. My friend was a little boastful and confident so he stayed. I walked about 20 meters to the corner of the street and just watched. Beside me was a bystander watching the action as well. He didn’t “look like” a tourist but instead a New Yorker. On his face was a look of pure entertainment. More analysis. In less than 90 seconds my friend walked over and I asked, “Did you lose your money?” Baffled and confused, he said, “Yep”.

We had picked the correct card every time while “watching for free”. But when the money was on the line, the money was gone. What the hell just happened? Here we were, two educated, intellectual dudes perplexed at how some street dealer just “gamed” one of us out of his hard-earned money. Surely my friend placed that bet with a false sense of intellectual superiority thinking that he was head and shoulders above anyone else at the gambling table (which was the bottom side of a pizza box propped up on two milk crates). How could a dude shuffling around three cards outsmart a college-educated man? As we walked and talked, we started to realize that “the how” was easy and that it was really our fault for falling for it. Actually, it’s society’s fault. We’ve been led to believe that certain people are smart and sophisticated while others are simply ignorant. The hustlers working the tourist areas of New York City bank on this discourse, and they pay their bills because of this perpetuated lie. You see, on one hand, the ghettoization of black men cripples many, but on the other, it provides loopholes to success. The system is meant to work for all, but it often doesn’t, so there are some brave (I don’t know if this is the correct descriptive term) enough to say, fuck the system.

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