An Illinois appellate court has declared former Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson’s remaining legal appeals moot, closing the books on the criminal case stemming from the shooting death of Sonya Massey.
Grayson, who was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to the maximum 20 years, died in custody on August 23 from colon cancer.
The legal process is over. The racial grievance process is not.
White-on-black fatal violence by police or civilians is statistically rare. FBI Expanded Homicide Data consistently show that the large majority of homicides are intra-racial. Most black homicide victims are killed by other black people. Most white homicide victims are killed by other white people.
FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports for 2023, the most recent year for which complete data is available, show the same pattern that has held for decades. When homicides are inter-racial, black offenders account for a disproportionate share of white victims. In 2023, Black offenders killed roughly twice as many white victims (684) as white offenders killed black victims (334). Black-on-Black homicide (3,137) dwarfed both inter-racial categories combined.
When adjusted for population size, the disparity is even more stark.
According to 2023 census data, the American black population is 45.8 million people and the American non-hispanic white population is 195.4 million. Viewed under a per capita lens, black offenders killed white victims at a rate roughly 8 times higher than white offenders killed black victims.
Per capita, black-on-black homicide occurred at a rate more than 40 times higher than the white-on-black rate.
The data do not support the premise that white-on-black violence is a pervasive or characteristic feature of American life. The data do show that the reverse pattern is much more common, but that will never matter to the permanent racial grievance industry.
The scarcity of white-on-black violence is precisely why every confirmed or arguable case is seized, amplified, and preserved indefinitely. Racial activists have a very limited supply of examples relative to the narrative they wish to maintain. As a result, individual incidents are elevated into permanent symbols.
Emmett Till’s name is still invoked more than seventy years later. Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd have been similarly enshrined. The specific facts and legal outcomes become secondary. All that endures is white offender, black victim.
Local and national coverage already framed the shooting primarily through a racial lens. Protests and statements from civil-rights attorneys followed the standard racial script. The second-degree verdict and maximum sentence under that charge were treated by many as insufficient.
It’s virtually guaranteed we will be hearing the name Sonya Massey for decades to come.
The legal saga involving Sean Grayson has reached its end. The use of Sonya Massey’s name as an indictment of American society has only just begun.