“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” ~ *the last words of Sonya Massey

Every person raised in a certain kind of black church knows the power and gravity of those words. Those are the words to be said when facing the evil that has walked in your door and will soon take your life. It is not a prayer to save one’s life or for God to come down and prevent the flagrant act of violence to come. It is something between a benediction and a malediction, laying bare the wickedness of the soul encased in human skin standing before her. Her rebuke is on him and in him. Her rebuke of him stands. It stands and it continues to penetrate his soul. He will never be free of that rebuke. He will bear it like the mark of Cain. 

Sonya Massey had every right to be terrified of the police even as she needed them. It is a terrible choice we have to make is black people deciding when and if to call the police, when and if to risk our lives.

Black folk are so often gunned down in our own homes because this white supremacist framework under which we are still colonized says we don’t belong here, or there or anywhere. It is never safe for us to call the police. There is no encounter with police that cannot turn lethally violent for a person with black or brown skin. We are never safe with them. And yet, sometimes we need them.

We are not yet ready to abolish the police. We have yet to establish, lay the foundation for or even fully imagine an alternative or a world without policing. We need to dream bigger and we need to dream better. 

Sonia Massey, I say your name. Ashé.

Edit: * among the last words of Sonya Massey.