Opinion: What the killing of Sonya Massey says about policing and the state of Black people in America

By Dayvon LoveSpecial to the AFRO What is clear about the killing of Sonya Massey by a police officer in her home? To me, it is the fact that Black people in general—and working-class Black people in particular—are living a life in America that is marked primarily by a disregard for our humanity and the normalization of violence against our community.& & Dayvon Love, director of public policy for the Baltimore-based think tank, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, speaks on the murder of Sonya Massey. (Courtesy photo)Sylvia Wynter, in a letter that she wrote after the Los Angeles riots in 1992, identifies a phrase that LA police officers were using to describe crime scenes where Black people had been killed in poor and working class communities. That phrase was “NHI,” which stands for “No Humans Involved.”& This was normally followed by officers having a lack of urgency when it came to figuring out who caused the killing.& & Many police officers, particularly those who are policing communities that are not reflective of their own, interact with Black people at our worst. While we meet with law enforcement in emergency situations on a daily basis, far too many are developing deep...