Page 69 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

54 . The Shadow of Whiteness

Johnnys. That same school is full of Johnnys. And I don't know if it
fooled other people, but I think Johnny was just putting on a facade,
a front. Tough Guy.

LeAlan: Why do you think he had to have that tough guy image?
To survive. To survive. (125)

Tyrone's father, incarcerated for assaulting Tyrone's mother, was also
visited by the young reporters. He described hearing about the crime:
I was in Stateville Penitentiary. We was in lock-down at the time, and
it came on the radio at about five o'clock in the morning. And I sat up
and just felt that my baby was involved. See, when you're close to
someone you get a feeling, and by me and my son being real tight,
when I heard it over the radio I just had this premonition. So when
we come off lock-down I called his mother and she was crying on the
phone. But I already knew. It's just that gut feeling that you have. So
me and all my buddies went to the yard, and we all bent down on our
right knees and said prayers for my son and the little boy that died.
There was about a hundred of us out there. A lot of people loved my
son. (Jones and Newman 1997, 128)
In addition, these young reporters continually stress that the problems
in the Ida B. Wells are not only generated from within the confines of the
ghetto but have been actively manufactured by the society at large. Such
connections are not entirely glossed over by the mainstream media, but
continue to make their points by highlighting scary pathologies. While
the New York Times quoted the sentencing judge as saying it is "essen-
tial to find out how these two young boys turned out to be killers, to
have no respect for human life and no empathy for their victim" (Staples
1996), Jones and Newman didn't seem to think the answer was so hard
to find, and at one point quoted the chairman of the Chicago Housing
Authority:
We've got to get back to the point where we don't stack poor people
on top of each other. Also, there are no role models: fathers, brothers,
sisters that get up and go to work every day and who are doing posi-
tive things. We don't have Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Little League—
almost anything. So when you don't have any alternatives, I don't
know why society would be surprised at what happens in public
housing today. (106)