It is always unfortunate when a young person is murdered or killed. I want to comment on some of the outrageous statements that I hear on local TV news, on this subject, several times a week.
I believe there is one common theme behind them. When a young person dies it is important for their survivors to identify something that gives that shortened life a meaning.
Most commonly the meaning is emphasized in young lives by pointing out that the person was a good student, well loved by fellow students, a promising athlete but most importantly that the young person helped children and the disabled. That gives traditional meaning to life in our Judeo-Christian culture.
In the past few decades, when young blacks have been shot by police because they were pointing a gun at the police or acting in some similarly threatening manner, the survivors usually call the young dead black ‘a victim of police racist brutality’.
That is giving the young black person's meaningless life meaning by putting them into a political context.
The same thing is often done (more recently) by Latino survivors who first state that the young dead person was much loved by his family, a Latino term for a 'meaningful life', and then adding the police racist brutality to make sure that a political meaning is added to the value of the deceased’s life.
The most recent instance I have seen is where the dead young white person is the victim of a 'gun culture' that the survivor claims could have been stopped by political legislation and abolition of the NRA. Again the young person’s meaningless life is given meaning by putting it in a political context.
Does this need ‘to give a dead person’s life meaning’ explain the preposterous statements we hear from survivors about murders and killings on TV news?