MOST OF us do not know Rio-Jarell Tatum, but a part of something vital to all of us died with him on North Eutaw Street on Memorial Day weekend. The 19-year-old Penn State freshman was nothing less than our hope for our city's future.

Mr. Tatum was shot and killed while home from school for the holiday - home to the city whose mean streets he had disdained in favor of the pursuit of academic and athletic excellence at Poly; achievements that had earned him a college scholarship and a chance at the American dream.

It was another Baltimore murder. Another murder among so many. Murder in numbers so staggering that we have grown accustomed to, and even accepted as the norm, a level of inhumane violence that defies the very concept of civilization. We celebrate as progress a reduction in killings to less than 300 a year, and we regard each reported case not as a human catastrophe but as routine news.

And we have accepted a culture in our midst that rejects the fundamental values on which our free society depends - hard work, personal responsibility, respectfulness, honesty, education, morality. Instead, the culture glorifies violence as a substitute for manhood, ignorance as a badge of coolness and self-indulgent greed as a way of life.

When its members kill one another, or take the life of a bystander in pursuit of their drug wars, we see it as the inevitable byproduct of inner city life. What we fail to acknowledge is how we are all diminished.

But Mr. Tatum will not allow us the luxury of dismissing his death as another unfortunate statistic. The life he lived and the promise he held will not countenance our indifference. His death is not how it must be. If it were, people like Mr. Tatum, with his nearly perfect grade point average and sports prowess, would not be possible. But here he was, blossoming into manhood like the son we all could be proud of, like the son of us all.

And there are many like him, doing all the things we need from our young people in order to have hope for our future. That they have rejected the miscreant culture around them begs us to do the same. Their acts cry out for our support, and the first step is to join them in the deliberate renunciation of an unacceptable way of life that threatens all of us.

It is not necessary that the economically poor be intellectually and spiritually impoverished as well. It is not a given that inner city life means we must accept disinterest in our schools and warfare in our streets.

Those of us who grew up here are justifiably proud of the changes brought to our downtown by the redevelopment of the Inner Harbor, the building of a convention center and stunning sports complex, the renovation of homes in our old communities and the spread of expanding wealth from Locust Point to Canton. The heart of the city has been remade, and its growth continues. And we have such hopes for a revived west side and entire new community around Johns Hopkins Hospital.

But we also carry in the backs of our minds the knowledge of our failures - a public school system that is regarded as a non-option for those with the means to go elsewhere, horrific housing conditions in dilapidated neighborhoods and a drug epidemic that begets a crime wave that makes murder commonplace.

The tragedy of Mr. Tatum's death has given us the gift of knowing about him and the opportunity to emulate his dedication to that which lifts us up as people and reject that which tears us down. Ignorance and lack of education should not be the norm. Drug use should not be an expectation. Failing communities are not a necessary part of our landscape. And murder should not be a way of life.

We need to act on these simple truths will all the energy we have devoted to downtown redevelopment. We cannot afford to chalk up another murder up to the way things are. We must determine how things must be. Otherwise we risk the killing of our hope.

Raymond Daniel Burke, a Baltimore native, is a partner in a downtown law firm.