Dear Family: If White Supremacists Kill Me, Don’t be So Quick to Forgive

It’s an uncontrollable black coping defense mechanism that I have. Each time a black person is gunned down in this country – I have this subconscious practice of placing myself in that situation. I wonder what I would’ve been doing in my blackness to make a supremacist go into attack mode. And then I try to process how my loved ones would handle my unjust demise.

If they kill me as I lay in my bed; if they gun me down as I exit the store because I fit the black description; if they kick in my door and shoot me as I eat cereal on my couch; if a traffic stop goes wrong; if I reach into my console for my insurance paperwork – how will the ones who love me respond to my killers?

Family and friends – don’t publicly dismiss the crime committed by my killers with your forgiveness.

In your private prayers ask the God that we serve not to harden your hearts, but when you hit the pavement each day – fight for justice in my name just the way that I would do for you. Don’t hug my killer in court - even if it takes more than 170 days for my killer to stand trial.

Why do we think they kill us so easily?

Part of their privilege in this country is the assurance that they will not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Don’t hire that attorney who will tell you to stand in front of the cameras and say you’ve forgiven them.

Even when they go digging for my most offensive tweet; even if they start to attach things to my name that couldn’t be farther from the truth – don’t stand there and tell them you forgive them for putting seven bullets in my back as I walked away. Don’t hug them for entering the home I paid for with the respectable living that I made.

Fight for me. Say my name. Don’t just make me a hashtag for my killers to see trending while they vacation during my funeral. Fight for me.