Crook Manifesto

The game of Ringolevio serves as a childlike allegory for The Situational Nature of Morality. The game is a version of Cops and Robbers in which two teams of equal number compete on the streets of Harlem. One team is designated cops and the other robbers. The cops chase the robbers, who are themselves hidden amongst the cars and businesses of the neighborhood. When a robber is caught, they are brought to “jail,” typically a park bench. Organized jail breaks are possible, and when they happen, they tip the balance of power in a game. At the end of a round, the cops from one team become robbers, and the robbers from the other team are recast as cops. The back-and-forth motion of cop to robber to cop again directly mimics the characterization in Crook Manifesto. Whitehead shows his characters to be neither wholly criminal nor wholly law-abiding, and in doing so he asks his readers to understand that the distinction between licit and illicit is blurrier than we might think, and that “crooked” and “straight” are ultimately part of the same line. Ray might deal in stolen goods and find himself involved in other illegal activities, but ultimately he is also a family man.