Like millions of other Americans, the murder of Washington Redskins standout Sean Taylor has had me near tears most of the week. The violent, senseless death of 24-year-old star safety in his home Monday night has been like a Rorschach Test of the American racial psyche.

Even as police tried to tamp down rumor and speculation, columnists and bloggers felt free to predict that the facts, once uncovered, would fit their beliefs about the pathologies responsible for the devastation being wreaked in the lives and families of so many young black men.

By the end of the week, the police announced the arrest of four suspects, black and male, 17-20 years old. It's said that some were acquaintance of Taylor's who had been to his home. Police say the killers intended to pull off a quick burglary when they thought Taylor would not be home, but instead found Taylor in his bedroom with his fiancee and 18-month-old daughter. Taylor died Tuesday morning from a gunshot wound to his femoral artery as he tried to defend his family with a machete he kept under his bed.

Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock touched many a raw nerve in an essay published Wednesday, before the arrests, that laid the blame for Taylor's murder at the feet of a "Black KKK" that Taylor to which Taylor had made himself vulnerable:

According to reports, Sean Taylor had difficulty breaking free from the unsavory characters he associated with during his youth.

"The 'keepin' it real' mantra of hip hop is in direct defiance to evolution. There's always someone ready to tell you you're selling out if you move away from the immature and dangerous activities you used to do, you're selling out if you speak proper English, embrace education, dress like a grown man, do anything mainstream.

"The Black KKK is enforcing the same crippling standards as its parent organization. It wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep...."

Whitlock's column was irresponsible journalism. He should have waited for the facts. He should have listened to the police who were saying all along that they thought this was a burglary gone wrong, not a targeted hit. Blogger Siddity was among those who criticized Whitlock:

"Why the character assassination? Why is it ok to talk about Sean Taylor and his "checkered past" when his past had nothing to do with his senseless death?

But no one denies that young African American men are dying at horrifying rates -- usually at the hand of other young black men. Homicide is the leading killer of African American men 15-34, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

A side note: It's also the second leading killer of African American women. The discovery Thursday of the body of 20-year-old Jackson State University student Latasha Norman was yet another grim reminder of that fact, And all too true to form, police arrested her ex-boyfriend in the slaying. "Blogger SerenityLife called Norman's murder, "Tragic and senseless!" and asked readers:

"Drop me a note or leave a comment if you have heard about this story before today (or at all for that matter) on ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN, or MSNBC...just curious."

No one had left a link on SerenityLife's page as of this evening.

But there has been lots of ink on Sean Taylor. David Aldridge, sports columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, issued a cri de coeur:

"There are those, including colleagues I respect, who say they're not surprised, and infer that Taylor had it coming, because he had had a beef with some bad people two years ago that led to brandished guns and cars shot full of holes. And, thus, it was inevitable that he had to die, like life is a Shakespearean play or something. A Montague is dead; a Capulet must follow. It's in the script.

"No, no, no. That is wrong.

"As black men, we cannot allow ourselves to be defined by anyone - by the media or by ourselves - and accept the premise that one beginning means only one possible ending...."

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, whose work I love not only for its intelligence and humanity, but because so much of it is focused on building on what works instead of fixing blame for what doesn't, shed cleansing tears:

"And once again, this is how we die. Fallen, crumpled, bleeding from a bullet's hole. Woman and child left to wail, left to mourn. Left.

"It was, of course, not a "we" who died that way last week in Miami, but a "he," NFL star Sean Taylor, 24, shot in his home by a burglar. But maybe we can be forgiven, we black people in general, we black men in particular, for placing a "we" where others would a "he," for seeing in the fate of this singular individual all the brothers and sisters we have wept and mourned and given back to the soil. Maybe we can be forgiven for feeling the only difference is that the world knows his name and did not know theirs...."

Shay at Booker Rising faults the African American community:

"We don't value us and crack down enough on perpetrators within our communities, instead of so many among us excusing the behavior of criminals within our communities...."

For Meg, the lesson in all of this is that Taylor should have had a gun:

"If Mr. Taylor had kept a gun in his room, he most likely would have taken one of his assailants with him. It might have even saved his life, we'll never know because he didn't have a gun...he just had one colossal knife. That knife and Taylor's muscles should have been all that was necessary to keep himself safe and unharmed in his own home...."

As for me, I can't help but think that something bigger is at work here. I keep thinking of a 1995 book by Prof. Jennifer Hochshild, Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class and the Soul of a Nation. Hochschild, a political scientist at Harvard, studied surveys of black and white Americans, grouped by race and class, about their attitudes toward the American Dream. She defined the American Dream as the belief that one can achieve success on one's own terms. Her findings revealed troubling fault lines of race and class resentment. What's particularly relevant for this discussion is her finding that some lower-income African Americans viewed middle class blacks with contempt -- even as an obstacle to their own success.

Does this have anything to do with Taylor's murder? I have no idea. But I do know that the dream was that men like Sean Taylor would be examples for younger men of how to make it in America -- he got an education, worked hard to develop his talents, started a family. I wouldn't be surprised if Taylor thought that he was being a good role model to the the kid that he paid to mow his law.

I have to wonder whether the young men whom the police say took his life saw a human being worth emulating, or just an easy mark? And if the latter is the case, where did that notion come from, and what can we do to root it out? And don't just chalk it up to hip-hop without recognizing that the "Greed is good" mentality isn't unique to Fiddy Cent and his fellow "cool posers. A friend of mine who lives and works in a gentrifying neighborhood in Philadelphia told me that she's come across young impoverished men of all races who think, "work is for punks." And I think of the two men (who happened to be white) who invaded a Connecticut family's home a few months back, killing a mother and two daughters, and leaving a grieving father who is struggling to find a reason to go on.

This post, is about the death of two young black people, but it is more than that.

I don't know any answers. but I know all of us had better start looking for solutions. Soon. All of us. Together.

Related:
Kissing Suzy Kolber, "Man and Beasts are Mortal, but Measts are Forever

Photo of Sean Taylor from Washington Redskins site
Photo of Latasha Norman from Black College Wire