O’Shae Sibley was stabbed to death for voguing at a gas station. Someone killed him for dancing because they hated witnessing his joy and comfort with who he was as a human being- a gay Black man. Someone violently took his life because he was LIVING. And that’s heartbreaking. And it’s infuriating because – gas stations & corner stores are already dangerous places for Black people- Black boys and Men particularly- where we have seen stories of us dying there for “loud music”, “selling cds, buying skittles and tea, “selling loose cigarettes.”
Usually those encounters at those gas stations came with police or racists- and yet here- this 28 year old man had his life taken because someone else Didn’t like how he danced or how they felt when seeing him dance or seeing him happy or seeing him FREE. They hated his light probably Because it illuminates places within them that they want to remain dark. Places they refuse to reconcile within themselves without inflicting violence on anyone whose unapologetic life and fearlessness is a mirror to a broken person’s own internal conflicts & insecurities.
O’Shae Sibley was a professionally trained dancer from the Alvin Ailey school and he was killed for doing what he loved and because of who he was- A happy, dancing gay Black Man doing a dance that gay Black men created. He should not be dead for that. And that should outrage us. It should outrage all of us because something that this society has done made someone else see that as “Ok” to do to him. Made him dispensable in their minds, made him a target. And I think we have to sit with and reconcile that as humans. Reconcile how it is that someone Could be on their way to a gas station and never make it home for no other reason than – somebody else didn’t like how he was living or how he was getting his life. He deserved better. Humanity can be better. But it has to want to be as liberated mentally as O’Shae Sibley was.
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