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Degrees of connection
Aug. 31st, 2005 12:25 pmOur morning routine is that I wash up while ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler reads the newspaper; so I get to heckle the news bulletin on the radio, while he gives me the low-down from the paper.
A sad little story has been emerging about a shooting at a christening party in south London. There are any number of angles from which you could examine it, but the detail that was needling me yesterday was that every bulletin, on the hour and on the half hour, was repeating one single fact about the woman who was killed: she was holding a baby, to which she was not related. As if this was the only thing that mattered, as if shooting women was just one of those things, but a woman who was holding a baby, even if it wasn't her own baby, who was being maternal if not actually a mother* - well, that was going too far.
"Hang on," saiddurham_rambler, "She was related to the baby, but distantly." And he checked the Guardian report: "The baby's father was her uncle.". This makes them cousins. How long has that been a distant relationship, let alone no relationship at all? How long has cousin been unfamiliar enough that the exact relationship has to be spelled out?
Admittedly, I was brought up to use cousin is a wide, Shakespearian sense; a cousin is someone to whom I am related, but not necessarily closely. But that isn't what's going on here, Zainab Kalokoh was shot while celebrating the christening of her cousin (they were, despite the age difference, first cousins).
Why does this detail get to me? A woman was killed by men (and boys) who thought the slight riches to be had from the handbags of guests at a family party were worth shooting people for. Isn't that the real issue? Yes; and I'm not making any causal connection between that unintended denial of family relationship on the one hand, and, on the other, the failure (in its extreme form) to acknowledge other people as having equal claims to your own. But they do echo together in my mind.
* The Guardian shouldn't get away with all the brownie points here; its headline describes the dead woman as "young mother".
durham_rambler reads the newspaper; so I get to heckle the news bulletin on the radio, while he gives me the low-down from the paper.A sad little story has been emerging about a shooting at a christening party in south London. There are any number of angles from which you could examine it, but the detail that was needling me yesterday was that every bulletin, on the hour and on the half hour, was repeating one single fact about the woman who was killed: she was holding a baby, to which she was not related. As if this was the only thing that mattered, as if shooting women was just one of those things, but a woman who was holding a baby, even if it wasn't her own baby, who was being maternal if not actually a mother* - well, that was going too far.
"Hang on," said
durham_rambler, "She was related to the baby, but distantly." And he checked the Guardian report: "The baby's father was her uncle.". This makes them cousins. How long has that been a distant relationship, let alone no relationship at all? How long has cousin been unfamiliar enough that the exact relationship has to be spelled out?Admittedly, I was brought up to use cousin is a wide, Shakespearian sense; a cousin is someone to whom I am related, but not necessarily closely. But that isn't what's going on here, Zainab Kalokoh was shot while celebrating the christening of her cousin (they were, despite the age difference, first cousins).
Why does this detail get to me? A woman was killed by men (and boys) who thought the slight riches to be had from the handbags of guests at a family party were worth shooting people for. Isn't that the real issue? Yes; and I'm not making any causal connection between that unintended denial of family relationship on the one hand, and, on the other, the failure (in its extreme form) to acknowledge other people as having equal claims to your own. But they do echo together in my mind.
* The Guardian shouldn't get away with all the brownie points here; its headline describes the dead woman as "young mother".
