Page 68 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

The Shadow of Whiteness . 53
older boy, Tyrone, in these terms: "He failed every subject in the fourth
grade, including gym, but was passed into the fifth grade and was re-
peating it when he was arrested at 11. His father, who taught him how
to fight when he was 6 or 7, is in prison for home invasion. The boy fre-
quently ran away from home and slept in abandoned buildings. His I.Q.
is 76."
The accretion of detail is similar here to the pastiche of images
swirling around Tanisha. Why note that Tyrone had failed gym? What is
this supposed to mean—that he was uncooperative, did not attend class,
or was perhaps uncoordinated? A sort of sinister connection is made be-
tween Tyrone's being taught to fight at "6 or 7" and his father's incar-
ceration, as if one naturally leads to the other. But what boy growing up
in a place like the Ida B. Wells wouldn't be taught how to defend him-
self? What is the relevance of Tyrone's I.Q. to the crime? Finally, the
child is described as running away from home, but we are not told why.
Perhaps the fact that his mother was a crack addict, a detail not men-
tioned in the article, had something to do with it.
The article also describes the Ida B. Wells housing projects, where the
boys grew up and where Eric Morse died, as a place "where gangs, guns
and death at an early age are part of everyday life" (Terry 1996). These
hackneyed images are fleshed out considerably in the account by LeAlan
Jones and Lloyd Newman, who also investigated the Eric Morse killing
(1997). At the time that the two reporters began to gather their informa-
tion, they themselves were fifteen years old, and had grown up in the same
community as Eric Morse and his killers. In their own musings and as
they interviewed a wide range of residents, prosecutors, politicians, and
relatives, the relevant problems included "gangs, guns and death at an
early age," but the picture was rendered complex in a way the mainstream
press failed to explore. Jones and Newman's analysis of the problem in-
cluded elements most often left out of depictions of "cold-hearted child
criminals" like Johnny and Tyrone who killed Eric Morse—depictions
that are particularly one-sided when the perpetrators are poor and black
(Dowdy 1998). What LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman describe are two
very troubled boys. They were boys who had problems and who caused
problems, but in this account they are also viewed as boys who were also
worthy of compassion and even love. In speaking with LeAlan Jones,
Johnny's special ed teacher said the following:

Had I been able to hold on to him longer, I could have taught him. He
would have opened up more, because at some time all kids open up.
Johnny was not the first Johnny I've had. The school system is full of