Mallory: Hey, Carvell: would you say that white Americans pretty much constantly misunderstand the concept of black forgiveness?
Carvell: It’s hard to know what white Americans are thinking, but given what they say, then yes. Like…a lot. A lot. Like this guy who got on the shooter’s Facebook page and forgave him publicly. I saw a lot of white people, even friends, sharing that, like: “See! Isn’t this beautiful?” Whereas a lot of my black friends were more, “If this fool doesn’t get THE ENTIRE FUCK out of here with that…”
I saw that made some white friends nervous.
Like they felt like this shooter needed to be forgiven by black people in order for them to feel comfortable. Which, if you’re not the shooter, is bizarre to say the least.
Mallory: Right.
Carvell: I think a lot of people forget that forgiveness of racists among black people is something that WE DO IN ORDER TO KEEP OUR SOULS INTACT.
Mallory: Oh man, let’s start with that. Break down a little, if you will, what you think forgiveness means in the context of Black American Christianity, with the usual caveat that you do not speak for all black Americans, but are familiar with the broad context?
Carvell: Yes. Thanks for that, and also why do we still have to explain that I don’t speak for 40 gajllion people. But. Anyway. There’s a difference between the private act of forgiveness and the public act of forgiveness.
Mallory: Which I think maybe a lot of white people do not understand! Again, there are many kinds of white people and white Christians, but in the broad Christian context I grew up in, saying “I forgive you” was generally understood to be a complete act. You forgave someone when you were DONE wrestling through what they had done to you. And it meant that you were, if not over it completely, at a certain amount of peace, and that things were, generally speaking, “okay.”
Carvell: Right. Well, when your entire history in this country has been about literally dying to be considered human, you have to develop a Christianity that enables you to fight while also “forgiving them” who hurt you. We have to forgive the sinner because the accumulated resentment could destroy us, but that will never mean that we don’t fight tooth and nail against the sin.
Mallory: So it has more to do with self-protection than it does with absolution, it sounds like.
Carvell: Absolutely. It’s nothing to do with the offender and it’s not about granting a pass to anyone.
Mallory: I think a lot of us miss that entirely.
Carvell: It’s more about clearing your heart of hate SPECIFICALLY SO YOU CAN CONTINUE TO FIGHT.
Mallory: Whereas we hear “I forgive you” and we think “Wow, what a great guy, I would NEVER be over ___ so quickly”
Carvell: Yeah, no. You guys probably need to get that untwisted.
Mallory: It seems this idea of forgiveness is 1. an act that is about keeping one’s own soul free from bitterness and destruction and 2. as a process. But more often white people or just society at large tends to think of it as a final act that lets the offender feel unburdened from guilt. Does that seem roughly accurate?
Carvell: Again, I don’t know what white people actually think. But it seems like there is not nearly enough urgency about getting this racist shit under control and it doesn’t seem like the “endlessly forgiving Negro” story is helping that at all. This is why I cringe when I hear white people sharing stories of black folks who were royally fucked over six ways till Sunday saying “I forgive you,” like “isn’t this beautiful.”
America has a long history of raping, robbing, enslaving and killing people and then urging those same people to find and express forgiveness and peace. So when I hear “pray for peace” from a white person in the hours after Charleston, it lands very, very wrong.
These folks were praying for peace and expressing forgiveness by letting this dude into their church when they were slain. Their pants were pulled up and they weren’t “challenging authority.” And they still got killed.
Mallory: Right.
Carvell: Genuine forgiveness is important for one’s soul and serenity. But an oppressive nation likes to use forgiving the sinner to get people to forgive (and thereby allow the continuation of) the sin. That we won’t do.
This is why, for today, for me public talk of forgiveness is out.
Mallory: That makes a lot of sense. I think for the rest of us, for non-black people, if we hear “I forgive you” from a black person to someone who has harmed them and to assume “this story is over now, what a beautiful ending to a sad tale,” we commit a huge moral error.
We hear “I forgive you” and think “Well, then, there’s nothing more to see here.” And that thought lacks empathy, lacks courage, lacks self-awareness, lacks goodness.
Carvell: Yes. It sort of speaks to the thing I’m always talking about, the inability of oppressed people to be seen as human in the eyes of the oppressor. Black people aren’t some mysterious magical race with superhuman forgiveness powers. We are people like you and we are exactly as pissed off as you’d be if this stuff was happening to you for all these years.
Mallory: It’s a relief for us, in some ways, a pressure valve. “If the families of nine people murdered in a church can forgive the killer, racism must not be so bad in this country.” It’s a weird and twisted moral gymnastic leap to get out of accountability
Carvell: Yeah, no. You need to feel like racism is real bad in this country. Because last week, nine people were murdered in a church. There should be no clause, “but” or caveat after that sentence. That should just sit in your stomach like some bad meatloaf for a long, long time. There’s no bright side.
Mallory: The forgiveness belongs to those families; it’s not ours to share
Carvell: YES.
That’s exactly right. Stop trying to co-opt these people’s forgiveness. They can forgive all they want, we should be outraged and entirely unforgiving of this bullshit as a society. The way the media handles forgiveness is like it’s something that washes the stain away, wipes it clean. That is the OPPOSITE of reconciliation in this country.
America tries to pass it off: “the past was bad, but hey, it’s all good now.”
Mallory: I think sometimes that because on some level white Americans know that we are complicit in racism, we are especially eager to talk about forgiveness. It wouldn’t interest us so much if we didn’t on some level feel culpable
Carvell: Right, but the irony is as long as you cling onto your forgiveness fantasies you’re going to have this problem facing you everywhere you turn. America is living a fucking ghost story.
We should all know this. we’ve all seen Poltergeist.
Mallory: (I have never seen Poltergeist)
(but I get the gist)
Carvell: except for Mallory we’ve all seen Poltergeist!
The spirit of our past continues to haunt us because we ignore it. Or try to, with some cockamamie stories about forgiveness and post-racial and reverse racism and all the other nonsense white men shout at me on Twitter.
Mallory: It seems it would be so painful and disconcerting, to constantly experience and be reminded of the ways racism still has a hold on this country, while simultaneously hearing from white people “That doesn’t exist! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Like racial gaslighting.
Carvell: That’s exactly what it is. I do not exaggerate when I say that every single thing in the killer’s manifesto is something someone white has said to me in response to a piece I wrote, while claiming not to be racist. But when someone comes along who is really about that Aggrieved White Guy life, the very same one you’ve been talking about, all of a sudden everyone claims to be mystified. But this guy didn’t parachute out of a UFO to do this. He’s an American who is living American Whiteness. He’s making the same arguments you are. How is this a surprise? To be black in America is to come under constant attack on your soul, humanity, and everything else you need to exist.
That’s why we’ve learned to forgive and fight at the same time.
We’re forgiving and fighting the same things at the same time. I forgive for myself while I fight for all of us.
Mallory: Is there any ground you felt like we didn’t cover?
Carvell: I just wish people would leave black folks alone. Stop trying to police us, control us, steal from us, manage our behavior at every turn. I wish white people would instead just admit 1. “this is a racist-as-shit country, and it’s killing some of us and hurting all of us” and 2. “We need to get right about that because we’re the ones wrong about that.”
Mallory: Hey, thank you for taking the time to chat about this with me for the site.
Carvell: No problem. The Toast is the best!
Mallory: Also is Poltergeist any good, should I watch it
Carvell: Yes. if I recall correctly.
a well-made movie about a modern day haunted house that works pretty neatly as a metaphor for American history.
Tags: carvell wallace, chats with mallory and carvell, racism
This is fantastic and YES YES a thousand times yes. I think also white people latch on to this idea of black forgiveness because white people still deeply fear black violence. And if someone says publicly “I forgive ____” then OK, that black person isn’t angry and won’t be violent.
White fear of black violence is my ultimate incoherent rage yelp inducer, to borrow Nicole’s phrase. Blacks have experienced so much terrorism and violence at white hands in this country. And yet white people who have never encountered violence in their lives, who are around blacks every day and are never victimized (I work in Center City Philadelphia – these are my coworkers, unfortunately), quite openly express fear of the people all around them. As if every black person they fear does not actually live with the threat of existential violence all the damn time, at the hands of the STATE, for fuck’s sake.
yeah. what msk said
thank you for articulating why people posting about the victims’ forgiveness was really rubbing me the wrong way. exactly this.
This was a super thought-provoking conversation. Thank you very, very much.
Ohhhh, this cleared some things up for me. I was saying to somebody the other day that the public forgiveness made me feel uncomfortable, not because they were wrong to forgive, but because it was so soon that I was wondering whether they had felt pressured to do so, like if they didn’t they would be Angry Black People. So I guess that wasn’t a completely backwards perspective, but it was obviously missing some key context.
Thank you so much for this. It helped me get the perspective I needed to better wrap my head around the concept of forgiveness as a way to keep fighting. I grew up with my white church’s definition of forgiveness as “everything’s okay now, I’m not gonna fight about it anymore”, and sometimes even “I’m not upset by the thing you did, and I’m sort of condoning your actions”. Because of that, I wondered if I was being heartless by not wanting to “forgive” people because no, the thing you did was not okay, nor will it ever will be. It makes more sense, now.
And yeah, exactly what msk said. White fear of black violence is an absolute cancer in this country. I feel kind of sick when I think about how I perpetuated it all the way up through college, but me feeling guilty doesn’t help anybody. (It seems silly to me now, how long it took me to figure out that he didn’t assault me because he was black, he did it because he was a bad person. I wish I could make the rest of my family understand that.) It’s messed up, how people react like they’ve already been victimized when they’re really just scared. There has to be a way to get people to realize that their fear is destructive, but I can’t figure out how.
Yeah, exactly… In my Baptist upbringing, once you “forgive” that meant you couldn’t bring it up anymore as a grievance or even a problem that continues to exist. “Forgive and forget.” Treat the person like they’d never wronged you at all. And kids were hella pressured into it. From “no dinner until you forgive” to “if you don’t forgive, it’s going to poison you spiritually and also wreck your entire life, nothing nice will ever happen to you again.” And that creates such fucked-up environments as recently documented at Bob Jones University, where sexual assault survivors are pressured to “forgive” and never speak of it again, thus hushing up the whole business and enabling the perpetrator to carry on without consequences.
So yeah, the whole notion of forgiveness — especially the oral ritual of asking explicitly for forgiveness, or granting it — really rankles me. But I am also big about not judging others who have different cultures, let alone who have been through things I can’t imagine. So when I hear those viral forgiveness stories, I’m more inclined to wince and look away. (I couldn’t even read that FB dude’s comment, it hit way too many bad memories.) But this interview post really helps illuminate the other side, which I’d never known before!
I am not a religious person, so some of this is lost on me, but I’ve always found this model of understanding forgiveness to be helpful: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/015…
Or, alternately, the idea that forgiving literally forgives a debt. If someone owes you money and you forgive their debt, that doesn’t mean you’re going to turn around and lend them a hundred bucks the next day, you know? It’s simply that THAT debt is no longer owed, no more and no less.
Yours is the first description of forgiveness I’ve ever read that I truly understand. Thank you.
Still so confused that one Facebook comment was taken as “this is over.” I mean, in the Catholic tradition I was raised in, you’re called on to forgive and love sinners despite whatever they’ve done, but the offense is still there until they decide to go through the whole process of confession. Like, it’s even better to forgive and help the worst people, because that may help them repent one day, but your forgiveness doesn’t erase the crime itself in the slightest; that only happens once somebody’s decided they want to change, expressed that they’re sincerely sorry, and actually made amends. And personally, I don’t see a racist terrorist doing any of that any time soon.
I was thinking about this too- in my Catholic tradition (which, frankly, is only one of dozens of other Catholic traditions no matter how much we try to be one Church) forgiveness isn’t something you talk about. As in, if I’m harmed by someone, my forgiveness of them is only between me and them and between God and me. I let go my desire for vengeance and I try to take on the hope that they can truly repent of their wrong and make their lives better. And I do not want them to suffer for my sake- I never want to be the sort of person who feels better because someone else is in pain.*
So when I shared an article on the BBC about the words of the family members of the victims in Charleston I was thinking how I was just stunned and grateful that they shared such an example of grace, the “Live Jesus in Our Hearts” kind of grace. I guess I didn’t see how what is fundamentally a spiritual action could be seen as a political one. I’m so glad and grateful, as always, for the way people have been willing to speak about how the complicated history of the way African American faith and spirituality is talked about that this becomes yet another way of “othering” black Americans.
*I don’t have to explain that this is a goal and not something I’ve actually reached, right? I’ll let my fellow Toasties know when I reach that stage so I can start doing some miracles what with my sainthood and all.
Same — my understanding of forgiveness as a spiritual tool for Christians is that the person doing the forgiving does so at least in part (if not largely) for their own good, because holding onto bitterness and anger is not a good way to live your life. There’s such a thing as productive anger, which we’re seeing in action this week, but the kind that eats away at your soul is simply poisonous. It gives the original offense (and the offender) power over you that they shouldn’t have. I was awed by the gracious words of the victims’ families, but not for a moment did I think the message was “it’s all good, stop feeling bad about being a racist murderer.”
Me too. I’m kind of surprised that any practicing Christian would take the forgiveness by the families as meaning that the problem is “over” and I’m not convince that many did, really. I was talking to my mom about this over the weekend, and after we marveled at the families for being such better Christians than we think we would be in the same circumstances, we went on to talk about how these murders had made her reconsider her stance against the death penalty, since she really thinks the shooter deserves to die. I was raised to believe that criminal justice is for all of society, whereas forgiveness is an internal spiritual discipline.
And of course now that I’ve said that, I read some more comments from people with experience with evangelicals who think the representation of the Christian view in the original article was accurate. I should clarify that I am mainline Methodist and don’t know too much about evangelicals.
Round of applause for the Toast policy of discussing issues of X- group through the writing of a person in X- group with lived experience. It is the greatest.
So much this.
Very good article. I think white evangelical Protestants tend to look at forgiveness as they look at salvation–a one-step process that wipes clean all previous sin as if it had never been. This is a terrible model. It means that people who have been wronged are constantly being pressured to essentially pretend that the wrong never happened, and in any situation where the wrongdoer and the wronged are not equal in power, there is both great potential for abuse and a closing off of any possibility of systematic or long-term change on the part of the wrongdoer. (You know those poor Duggar girls were pressured to “forgive” their brother so that he could just go on his merry way.)
Ohhhh.
I never thought about *that* conflation.
My (Australian, Presbyterian) upbringing was very particular on forgiveness being something that could only be granted (but was not obliged to be) if it was requested with repentance – very much separated out from the “releasing bitterness”, which was a separate concept. I’ve started understanding *this* conflation more lately after reading stories of people coming out of the Quiverful movement, etc.
So this post and comments are enlightening: thank you!
Thank you for this. You are exactly right on in the critique of how the white church (which I’m a part of) understands forgiveness and reconciliation. It’s a massive failure that has to change.
This was really great, and also helped me think through some of what I felt the day after Nelson Mandela died when Tony Blair came on Radio 4 saying, “I think that one of the greatest things about him that we should all remember was his capacity for forgiveness”. I made an incoherent rage yelp in my kitchen but wasn’t sure what else to say about it, so thank you for conversations like this.
And also maybe his capacity to engage in radical speech and civil disobedience, despite that making a huge number of people incredibly angry and uncomfortable?
This is so, so good. “racial gaslighting” – yes. “The forgiveness belongs to those families; it’s not ours to share” – YES. “Black people aren’t some mysterious magical race with superhuman forgiveness powers. We are people like you and we are exactly as pissed off as you’d be if this stuff was happening to you for all these years.” YES YES YES YES YES
I have never, ever thought about how the mental model of forgiveness that Mallory describes above is a toxic mess that causes… well, a lot of our problems societally. And I have never, ever thought about the possibility of another, purposefully articulated model of forgiveness, like Carvell describes. I think I understood on some level that that’s exactly what the families of the victims in Charelston were doing, though, but to have it explained makes all the difference.
This is excellent. Thank you, Carvell and Mallory
Thank you. Talk of demands for “forgiveness” reminds me on of one of the more powerful quotes from Ann Leckie’s novel “Ancillary Sword”:
“‘And then what? asked Grandfather. ‘What then, Soldier? From a child I was taught to forgive and forget, but it’s difficult to forget these things, the loss of parents, of children and grandchildren.’ Her expression was unchanged, blank determination, but her voice broke slightly at that last. ‘And we are all of us only human. We can only forgive so much.’
‘For my part,’ I replied, ‘I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place.'”
“not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place”
YES.
This is also a fantastic piece about how forgiveness is twisted to hurt victims. http://darcysheartstirrings.blogspot.com/2015/05/…
As a Catholic this has driven me crazy for ages. No you don’t get to force victims to forgive and forget! If they want to for the sake of healing, great but only God (if they believe) and the victim have the ability to do so.
And the individual victim can forgive as much as they want, and follow whatever process they like, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t take steps to keep violent people from disrupting what should be a functional society.
Absolutely right. Seems like the first question the media asks after a murder is “Do you forgive?”, which is oppressive emotion-policing and gaslighting in general, but especially so in the context of white racist murders. I’d like to see them ask white people (or men’s rights activists after the Isla Vista shooting, etc.) “Do you repent?” Just pull one of us over on the street and say, “Hey, do you repent of white supremacy?”
Actually, my priest highlighted this on Sunday (or maybe it was something she mentioned a Bishop saying), that we should all pay extra attention to the “we repent of the evils we have done, and the evils done on our behalf” in the Confession.
Carvell, thank you for taking the time to educate. I know it must be tiring having to explain this over and over and i sincerely appreciate your effort and knowledge.
Thank you. I knew I wasn’t understanding how “forgive” was being used in this context, but I was having trouble getting further than that. Reminds me a bit of some Buddhist ideals. One tries to let go of an attachment to anger not because a wrong didn’t happen, but because hanging on to the anger hurts the self. But working on letting go of the anger doesn’t preclude action. Kinda. Maybe?
I don’t know that the disconnect is white people generally having an absolute sense of forgiveness. The “forgive but don’t forget” model seems more widespread to me–though perhaps just because, as someone who believes in holding grudges and exacting vengeance, I notice it when it comes up and am annoyed. I see the necessity of it for self-preservation, though, in cases like this, and I think everyone would if they weren’t motivated to shove things under the rug.
Thank you for sharing this discussion here. Also, “bad meatloaf” is a very apt description.
Forgiveness is such a tricky concept that is often taught to children as straight forward, like the idea of wiping a slate clean. This makes understanding it as an adult much more difficult. I don’t believe that God wants you to stay in a situation where you are being hurt because you have forgiven the abuser. Exactly what Carvell was saying above: you forgive because you need to let go of the hurt and anger and feeling of injustice so you can move on. But what I really like about this piece is that I never tried to mesh those ideas of forgiving on a personal level with the injustices of racism on a systemic, cultural level. You can’t physically leave your abuser if your abuser is society. So how do you forgive but not forget and not allow the abuser to have the power of you hating them, when the abuse is ongoing and is ingrained into so many of your daily interactions? In my church we talk about building up our facilities to forgive, to love, to go to God, so that over time those actions will become easier. Using forgiveness as a mental shield is a really interesting idea to me.
My perspective on forgiveness, as a white Mormon woman, is that forgiveness releases the forgiver of the burden of hate that existed previously. Not a free pass for anything yet to come, not an agreement to go back to the way things were or to put up with the actions that necessitated the forgiveness in the first place.
When I first saw the articles about the Charleston victims forgiving the murderer I assumed that they were throwing off the hate so it wouldn’t burden them: the sorrow is enough of a burden. When I saw follow up articles suggesting that they were absolving him of his sins that seemed ridiculous.
I didn’t always have this view of forgiveness, but after coming to terms with some really shitty things my dad did, and dealing with the anger and hate I felt, I took some time to really forgive him for it. When people learn that I don’t have contact with him (unless he reaches out) they assume that I haven’t forgiven him. I have, but it was a difficult process and not something I want to repeat and I know he can’t act in a way that won’t require me to forgive him in the future.
This is a luxury that those without my privilege don’t share. They can’t avoid people that behave this way, so WE, all of us, need to change and behave in a way that won’t require forgiveness in the future. I don’t know how we do it, or that it’s even entirely possible, but we fail each other if we don’t at least try.
I have nothing useful to add so I just go through clicking like on everything.
That is an enlightening conversation.
Thank you for posting this, I feel more informed now.
remember this madness? – Oh brother
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrClRTc_fk
Great piece. Thanks for posting it.
A long time ago I read an article on what forgiveness means in different cultures, and it focused on America and Japan. Case 1: a Japanese woman made a mistake on a form while importing or exporting something, I don’t remember which. The American consulate found her and accepted it was an honest error. She wrote a letter of apology… and they charged her, regarding the letter as proof of guilt. Case 2: American soldiers assaulted a Japanese woman in Japan. They apologized to her and she accepted the apology. She and her lawyer were then bewildered when they pleaded not guilty.
Thank you so much for this, because when I heard about the families forgiving that POS I assumed it was some Christian thing, or whatever, since they are obviously going to be church people since they were VIOLENTLY ASSAULTED BY A TERRORIST at their church, and whatever those families need to do to cope, then by all means… and I AM SO ANGRY at how much attention that story gets instead of the story of the VIOLENT TERRORIST and how HE got to be such a disgusting embodiment of our national shame. “Oh, look over here at the saintly black people, they totally can be allowed to exist because they can demonstrate a level of otherworldly compassion that we can caricature to an extreme the same way we caricature any failing someone of color exhibits into a justification for their summary execution by armed authorities.” I don’t want to talk about the nice families and their forgiveness, I mean let them have all the space they want but that’s their personal narrative they need to work through and the rest of us need to focus on OUR problem, about how we live in a society where shit like this happens and it is NOT an accident, or a “tragedy”, it is the inevitable extreme consequence of enduring racism embedded so deep into our every social structure that we can ignore it, it’s just the cracks that we put a little affirmative action wallpaper over and call it fixed. And of course, we want an easy fix, hell I’m reconsidering my years of activism against the death penalty because I’ll be honest, I have never wanted someone dead so badly in my life, I don’t forgive him or any of us, and I can’t control a deep desire to make that shithead our collective white scapegoat. [Sorry for the yelling and the crazy and the language, everything about this is making me lose it, thank you for reading, maybe]
Oh, yeah, I definitely had to listen to my mother talk about how this proves that the South (and Christians) are better people, because "the families all immediately forgave the killer and they're holding prayer vigils in Charleston instead of having protests and riots."
This was–I kid you not–her direct segue from saying that she always assumes people who work at Dixie Bones and Chik-Fil-A are going to be nicer because you can expect that from Southern and Christian businesses.
It was . . . something . . .
Maybe it’s because i’m not Christian so “forgiveness” doesn’t mean something significant in that way to me -but I can’t imagine wanting or needing those victims or ANYONE to forgive the murderer. He doesn’t get a pass for his hatred and we don’t need to use forgiveness as a spiritual bypass for anger – anger is important. I’m angry and I want to do something.
I just loved this so much. I have been thinking all of these things but found it so hard to articulate them in the wake of such sorrow and anger. Thank you Carvell for speaking and Mallory for listening openheartedly. This is the kind of open discourse we need to be able to have if “racial reconciliation” is ever to become a reality.
The line, “America is living a fucking ghost story” is so true and so profound that I can’t believe it hasn’t been used before! I googled it trying to see if I could find it anywhere else, but couldn’t.
We have built America on the graves of all the indigenous peoples that were here first, as well as the lives we destroyed with slavery and Jim Crow and institutional racism. We just tried to cover it all up with a little dirt and built bright and shiny malls and housing developments on top and thought it would all stay down there. But, no. Those ghosts won’t stay down. If we want to resolve this mess, we have to dig them up, acknowledge them, their lives and their losses, as well as the losses of their descendants. We have to deal with them all out in the open, no hiding from them, no escaping their pain. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY!!!
Carvell: Genuine forgiveness is important for one’s soul and serenity. But an oppressive nation likes to use forgiving the sinner to get people to forgive (and thereby allow the continuation of) the sin. That we won’t do. This is why, for today, for me public talk of forgiveness is out.
Amen to that. I accept that those so harmed said those words, The words simply do not sink in to my head. Just typing these words makes me feel as though I’m about to vomit. We will climb out of this mess as we live in a different way. We need to live a new way.