Who Shot Johnny?": A Portrait of Youth Violence
Summary: In her 1996 essay, Debra Dickenson looks at youth violence in the form of the shooting of her nephew Johnny. She speaks about her anger of how society is filled with criminals like those who shot Johnny.
Andy Pollick
English 1550
Rough Draft Essay #2
10.30.2005
Who Shot Johnny"
As humans we strive to live in a utopian environment, free of elements of aggression, greed, and violence. Most of us try to live a healthy and satisfying life, gaining from opportunities that we have sought and worked hard for. We take life as it comes, and we accept the challenges and difficulties that life puts out as we continue on no matter how hard it gets. However, there are a multitude of people who tend to think that life is just too hard and that they should be handed everything on a silver platter. Greed and violence begin to factor into their life as they continue in their set ways. They think that the world should revolve around their every need and that life is unbearably hard and unjustly unfair. These are the people who think that rules are meant to be broken and cannot grasp the genuine idea of equal opportunity. Some feel jipped and decide that they will steal other people's gains to get through their miserable lives. Others take a much more drastic approach by turning to violence. They think that violence is the answer so that they may distribute fear throughout their neighborhood in order to gain the respect that they very much deserve. They think that negotiating by means of a weapon is a much more effective way of getting what they want they think that a gun will make them that much tougher than the next guy. These people are the convicts who plague our societies and make life that much harder for the rest of us. The idea of peace has never come across their minds; the only peace that they want is a piece of our pie that is in fact our slice that we have labored for throughout the years. What I want to know is what has violence done to contribute to the good of mankind? If destruction and devastation is considered good then I must be living in an alternate universe. Violence in itself has created nothing but chaos in a world that is capable of peace and prosperity.
In Debra Dickerson's essay "Who Shot Johnny"" she makes it a point to declare that who ever shot her nephew Johnny isn't someone that she has never encountered before. This person is not unlike many of the other negative people in this world, in fact this person can be effectively categorized as a negative trait in itself. Debra Dickerson says:
"When the call came, my first thought was the same on I'd had when I'd heard about Rosa Parks's beating: a brother did it. A non-job-having, middle-of-the-day malt-liquor-drinking, crotch-clutching, loud-talking brother with many neglected children born of many forgotten women. He lives in his mother's basement with furniture rented at an astronomical interest rate, the exact amount of which he does not know. He has a car phone, an $80 monthly cable bill and every possible phone feature but no savings. He steals Social Security numbers from unsuspecting relatives and assumes their identities to acquire large TV sets for which he will never pay. (234)
Dickerson realizes that this person isn't a person that is new to the world, instead this is a person who has plagued Dickerson and her family as well as the rest of the world. This is the person whom has tried their hardest to control everything and make life a living shit hole for everyone else living alongside them. Dickerson also writes, "We know him. We've known and feared him all our lives."(235)
Dickerson goes on to fill the reader in about past situations that use Johnny's culprit metaphorically such as getting her sister pregnant at the age of seventeen and shouting out profanities to Dickerson as well as stealing her mother's purse. This is someone who the Dickerson family, and the whole world for that matter, know personally and wish to rid this type of human being from their society. Yes, Dickerson loathes Johnny's assailant, but she doesn't make it a point to go out and try to get him. She knows that doing so will get her no where and that she would rather focus her attention to Johnny while he was healing in the hospital. Although the very nature of the crime is hard to overlook, Dickerson recognizes that her nephew is only one of thousands of victims of youth violence. It is difficult after hearing of these hateful accounts of crime to continue arguing that youth criminals do not deserve serious punishment. Sure the culprit should go to jail, but so should all the other violent criminals who are out running around in our streets. Why focus all the attention to the "bad guy" and how bad he is, when a family member is in pain and in need of his family.
Throughout the essay Dickerson writes with a fiery passion that makes her words emerge as pictures to the reader. The emotion is certainly evident at points, Debra Dickerson writes with a lot of power, yet she also is kind and gentle, however it is mostly directed towards Johnny. What is really touching about this is the fact that Johnny wasn't filled with hatred; instead he was content on becoming more and more independent as he tried to move on in his life. Johnny is a good example of what Black-America can be; they don't need to shoot everyone in sight. They don't need to act all tough and hard, they need to be men. Growing up is something that everyone is going to have to do, but unfortunately for Johnny his attacker hasn't had much time as the average person.
When reading this essay it is fairly easy to get the blood boiling by the descriptive words that Dickerson throws out at the reader. She makes it known that she is upset about what happened and what remains to happen in the world. Her word choice and tone makes it apparent that she isn't thrilled by the countless acts of violence that many are experiencing still in this world of supposed peace and justice. Justice seems like something long ago, instead we see a multitude of rights granted to criminals who deserve punishment of any type to account for all of their wrong deeds against society. The type of person that Dickerson describes as Johnny's assailant is everything wrong with society. It just isn't one person committing all the wrong; rather it is all the negative ideals and rudiments of our society that curse us. The blame cannot be centered on one individual making it that much harder for criminals to be sentenced in the court of law.
This story was more of a lesson about maturing in my eyes. There are countless numbers of kids who grow up to be criminals because no one ever taught them. Those are the types of people that would symbolize the shooter; they are a bunch of low life morons with nothing better to do than to hurt everyone. They are the people who ruin neighborhoods, turning something nice into trash. Hopefully as time progresses this injustice will end, and no more innocent people will be getting shot for saying hi.
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