There is a
question that seems only to get knottier as I grow older. I think about it a
lot. This weekend I found it elegantly posed in a book review in The
New York Times.
Let me preface
it by saying I am not mad at anybody. There is no family member who done me
wrong to whom I will never speak again, as there seems to be in many families.
Maybe that’s because I’m an only child. But, personally, I have no trouble
loving my enemies or praying that I may be forgiven in the same measure as I
forgive others. A friend of mine often said, “Everybody has a sack of rocks to
carry,” and there is wisdom in that. I can love someone through his sack of
rocks. Heaven knows, enough people overlook mine.
So on a
personal level, I find the virtue of mercy easier than a lot of
people. But then, when it gets political, reality stomps on the desire.
Chris Lebron, a
philosophy professor, reviews Grace
Will Lead Us Home by Jennifer Berry Hawes. It’s a book I’ll probably
have to read about the before, during and after Dylan Roof killed nine people
and wounded three at Emmanuel A.M.E. church, “Mother Emmanuel,” in Charleston
in 2015. A lot stood out in that example of what someone called, without
meaning Emmanuel, “American carnage.”
I hadn’t realized, for example, that Roof intentionally expended exactly 88 rounds of ammunition,
the number which neo-Nazis use as shorthand for “Heil, Hitler.”
The most
exceptional thing (mass shootings being as common as fried chicken in the USA)
was the instant forgiveness the congregation gave their assailant. At last, it
seemed, good rose up to conquer evil. Or did it?
That’s what
Hawes looks into. Covering what happened after to the congregation, Roof himself and the historic city where
the murders took place, she seems to have told us everything we can know
about the event. And then? Lebron puts it this way:
And this is where readers will have to make a choice about the costs of moving on. I wonder at white (and some black) Americans who cheered the act of forgiving Roof. He was the crystallization of a culture of racism that not only daily endangers black Americans but that also bolsters white privilege of all sorts. To forgive Roof is to extend an act of kindness to that culture and its beneficiaries. Moreover, this is an act that has been expected of blacks enduring racism in this country since the 17th century. Do the folks who applauded forgiveness grasp that historical dynamic?
It's a good review. Thanks for sharing. I think we have been embroiled here before in discussions about what forgiveness means and who it's for.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, forgiveness of Roof might mean something very different to those whose loved ones were killed, and to whites and blacks outside of that parish.
I think what's in the forgiver's heart matters: I forgive you because I refuse to let you win by allowing my own soul be eaten with hatred. Or I forgive you because you have been a hapless victim of pervasive racism in our society, but I pray for your redemption from sin.
Makes me recall two other mass murders involving religious communities. The first would be the Amish school shooting which killed five girls and wounded ten. The second is happened in 2002 when an armed man entered Conception Abbey, a Benedictine monastery, and shot 4 monks, killing 2 of them. He then shot and killed himself. One thing these articles make plain is that the pain lingers on, and forgiveness isn't cheap. I believe that the communities themselves get to decide if they forgive, and how they define forgiveness. Others shouldn't second guess them. I look on the members of the communities as my moral betters, because I am not at all sure if I would be able to forgive under the circumstances. Their model is Christ crucified, who forgave those nailing him to the cross.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link discussing the Conception Abbey shooting.
DeleteAnd this link touches on a further aspect of forgiveness with the Amish shootings, extending to the mother of the shooter.
My sister and her husband are not religious. And they have not forgiven the young neo-nazi who murdered their (white, non-Jewish) daughter and their (white, non-Jewish) son-in-law who were trying to keep his hate-filled ideas away from their family. It's something they might have to come to on their own, without the prompt of religious understandings such as Jesus forgiving his killers. If it happens, it will be on their own schedule, if ever.
ReplyDeleteShould they forgive him? Should other survivors of victims of hate crimes forgive their murderer?
I have no answers or insights to offer on this. I just know that I will never judge those who are the survivor-victims of these crimes whether they forgive - or don't forgive - the murderer.
"I will never judge ..." I agree. The only thing worse than being the parent of a murdered child would be being the parent of the murderer. I hope your sister's family will find some measure of peace someday.
DeleteNot judging but I am not comfortable with quick, almost knee-jerk forgiveness if it comforts the comfortable and allows them to reestablish their inner homeostasis. Oh, what nice black people. Look how they love us even if we shoot the crap out of them. I think it should take ten to twenty years to forgive murder. Nobody says it has to happen in milliseconds.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be able to forgive that kind of thing instantly.
ReplyDelete"He was the crystallization of a culture of racism that not only daily endangers black Americans but that also bolsters white privilege of all sorts. To forgive Roof is to extend an act of kindness to that culture and its beneficiaries."
ReplyDeletePerhaps I'm misreading this, but it reads to me as though there is some sort of collective racial guilt behind what Roof did; that the alleged "white privilege" which white people enjoy depends on nut cases like Roof - that they're useful idiots or useful thugs or some such. If this was apartheid South Africa, maybe that would make some sense. But in the United States in 2019, I reject that line of thought in toto. As I say, it's possible I'm reading more into this than is there.
Jim, I am reading it a little differently. It's possible that my problem with forgiveness in this situation rises from the way I read it, not the situation itself. But:
DeleteTo me, the problem is not collective guilt. But we all live in a society into which racism is baked. Some of us flourish more than others and some of us flourish to obscene heights, but some of us get running shoes at birth and others get wooden shoes. Part of the wooden shoes lies in the way people with different skin color are perceived by the dominant race. More white people than I would have predicted pre-2016 think that the situation is a) natural, b) largely the fault of dark-skinned people, and c) perfectly OK. As long as they continue to think that way, the society in which they flourish will continue to produce results that they think are indicative of their brilliance, and other people, some with greater brilliance, will clog along behind in wooden shoes.
It is that society that gave Dyan Roof "permission" to protect his race from the encroachment of an "inferior race." We are not all Dylan Roof. But we all live in that society. So what should we do about it?
Inveighing against racism, which is a liberal "solution," seems to be useless. Everybody is against racism in general, even most racists. Our noisiest racist says he doesn't have a racist bone in his body, and people who denounce racism, show up at Urban League breakfasts and are equal opportunity hirers agree with him: "Oh, he is not racist, he just says racist things." (All the time.) So, as I say, denouncing racism doesn't "take." The only medicine that may work over time -- again, istm -- is to stop settling for calling out racism and begin to call our racists for each and every specific offense. But then when does forgiveness begin?
"More white people than I would have predicted pre-2016 think that the situation is a) natural, b) largely the fault of dark-skinned people, and c) perfectly OK."
DeleteI know this isn't your major point, but I do want to say that I agree with you on this. 2016 was an eye-opener.
This conversation we're having right now is in the context of white/African American racism. The racist category that 2016 was primarily about, istm, was anti-immigrant fever - of which racism is one component. I'm making this distinction because I think the history of racism toward African Americans is quite different than anti-immigrant racism, and the impact and effects likewise are somewhat different. I know I sound like a white idiot when I talk about racism, just sharing my thoughts, such as they are.
Regarding forgiveness: I think of forgive/don't forgive as being on a different continuum than the justice/injustice continuum. As members of our society, but who were not directly victimized by Roof's heinous crime, our primary concern should be toward justice, and whatever social healing flows from it. It's not ours to forgive in this instance. Or so it seems to me.
Yeah, I think that's right.
DeleteI believe that ONLY the person who has been aggrieved has the right to forgive or not to forgive. All others should butt out!
ReplyDeleteLebron wasn't talking about the parishioners at Mother Emmanuel; he was talking about the rest of us who applauded their act of forgiveness (and kvelled in it as if we had something to do with it?).
ReplyDelete