There Is No Forward Here
The Supreme Court, White Cruelty, and the Black Tradition of Dissent
By Taylor Allyn
July 14, 2025
Aunt Jessie's Book
My Aunt Jessie believed her name was written in the Book. Not because she lived without fault—none of us do—but because she lived with conviction. She prayed over her food, her family, her neighbors. She served her church, studied her scripture, moved through this world with a quiet understanding that goodness wasn't an accident. It was work.
"I want to live right so when I get to the gates, I know my name's in the book."
When I look at this Supreme Court—Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito—I wonder if they believe their names are there too. I wonder if they believe their rulings—so precise in their cruelty, so wrapped in the language of tradition and God—will read as righteousness at the gates Aunt Jessie spoke of.
Aunt Jessie would have looked at Amy Coney Barrett and seen a woman who confused scripture with power, who mistook certainty for faith. She would have watched Clarence Thomas and recognized a man who traded his inheritance for proximity to those who would never claim him. She would have studied Samuel Alito's sneer and said what she always said about people who played God:
"If you try to handle it, what's there left for God to do? Cause when He handles it, it's well done."
They handle everything. God handles nothing. And their work shows.
When Cruelty Becomes Law: The Precision of Dobbs
June 24, 2022. The day Samuel Alito's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization turned fifty years of precedent into ash. Not with the blunt force of a gavel, but with the surgical precision of a scalpel—cutting rights with the delicacy of a surgeon and the compassion of a coroner.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to UNSPUN to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.