Collateral Damage = How Black Lives Are Dehumanized in Media Narratives

On October 21, 2024, Odair Moniz, a Black man, was fatally shot by police in Cova da Moura, a marginalized neighborhood in Amadora, Portugal. This incident, described as an "unfortunate event" by authorities, speaks to a much larger, global issue: the devaluation of Black lives. Moniz’s death, like so many others, was quickly swept into the growing list of police killings involving Black men, minimized to a headline or statistic. His humanity was overshadowed by the narrative, often fed by the media, that Black lives are collateral to broader systemic issues, rather than individuals with histories, communities, and dreams.

The language used in such cases is striking in its detachment. Phrases like "unfortunate incident" serve to absolve systems of power from accountability and redirect focus away from the loss of life. The dehumanization begins with the words used to frame these deaths, and it spreads, fostering indifference and eroding the public's emotional connection to these tragedies.

In contrast, consider how Jewish lives are portrayed in historical and modern contexts. Whether recalling the Holocaust or anti-Semitic attacks, Jewish victims are often treated with deep compassion. Each life lost is mourned as an individual tragedy. Their stories are told with detail, faces are shown, and their deaths are rightfully treated as injustices that must be remembered and prevented in the future. The same cannot be said for how Black deaths—especially at the hands of the police—are represented.

Similarly, the deaths of Palestinians in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict are often reduced to cold statistics, where Palestinian lives are frequently tallied without personalizing their humanity. The media consistently offers a narrative of “both sides,” often individualizing Israeli deaths while dehumanizing Palestinians, turning them into mere numbers lost in the fog of war. This mirrors how Black lives are often diminished in Western media, their deaths seen as part of a broader issue rather than a singular, tragic loss of life.

The disparity in how these lives are valued reflects entrenched societal biases. Black deaths are perceived as less significant, less newsworthy, and often treated with an air of inevitability. By contrast, the deaths of other groups—whether Jews in Europe or Israelis in modern conflicts—are afforded more humanity. This unequal treatment reveals a deep-rooted issue: some lives are simply seen as more valuable than others.

We must ask ourselves: why is it that when a Black person like Odair Moniz dies, it’s framed as an "incident," while in other cases, we witness a profound societal response to death and injustice? The answer lies in a history of systemic racism, where the worth of Black lives has been consistently diminished. Until we confront this bias—until we treat the death of every individual with equal care and empathy—society will continue to fail those whose lives are seen as collateral damage.

The killing of Odair Moniz is not just an “unfortunate incident.” It is a stark reminder of how much work remains in the fight for true equality and the recognition of the full humanity of Black lives.

by: Myriam Taylor