We try to control forgiveness because we know we need it

Last updated on: November 5, 2018 at 4:38 pm by Fred Clark

We try to control forgiveness because we know we need it 2018-11-05T16:38:21-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Hanif Abdurraqib finds wisdom in his frustration with the rituals of performative public forgiveness, “Why do we expect victims of racism to forgive?”

To deny someone a forgiveness that you cannot honestly grant them is a reasonable refusal to participate in a ritual of hollow civility that doesn’t serve a complex and honest emotional response to trauma, grief, or rage. … The harmed party should always have the first hand in establishing what counts as civil, what counts as worthwhile, and what will serve a greater good.

But if the demand is born of a thirst for polite performance, that demand can shorten cycles of both accountability and healing. When forgiveness is transactional, it is meaningless.

The miracle of forgiveness is that it inverts — it corrects — the prior power dynamic. The process of forgiveness acknowledges that the wronged party, the victim of an injustice, now has a kind of power over those who wronged them — the power to grant or to withhold forgiveness. This inversion of power is intolerable for The Powers That Be. It threatens their identity and source of meaning, i.e., their monopoly on power and choice.

The “ritual of hollow civility” of expected, or mandated, or coerced “forgiveness” then is partly an expression of resistance to this power inversion. The Powers That Be cannot abide the idea of the previously powerless having power over them, even so seemingly abstract a power as the granting or withholding of absolution. (And even though such absolution is something that none of their actions has previously shown them to desire or care about.) And so TPTB will not allow the victims of injustice to offer forgiveness, they will simply take it from them, thereby restoring and re-blessing the previous imbalance of power.

Abdurraqib gets at another huge part of this ritualized mandatory forgiveness when he writes that “It is unavoidable to mention that these expectations of forgiveness are often drawn along racial lines, in situations where there are black victims of a white offender.” He traces how this plays out in the face of both massive injustices, like the slaughter at a Charleston church, and in the more routine injustices and indignities of daily American life brought about by the various “incidents where white people call the police on black people for doing mundane things.”

Abdurraqib writes that the expectation of black forgiveness “feels fueled by a perverse need to see harmed people demonstrate nobility — because that’s how we can believe the myths that political suffering builds character, and that righteousness rather than power will inevitably triumph.”

Yes, but I think something larger and deeper is also at work.

I think this “need to see harmed people demonstrate nobility” stems largely from a fear of retribution. More than that, from a fear of justified, well-deserved retribution.

I tried to get at that a while back in a post about the panic of 1741 in New York City — “Empathy turned to fear and resentment.” In 1741, slavery was legal in New York, and white New Yorkers lived in perpetual fear of a slave uprising. There was no evidence that any such uprising or revolt was in the works, but white New Yorkers were convinced it had to be, and so they lost their minds in an orgy of mob violence, lynchings, sham-trials, torture and executions.

There was a kind of logic to this panic — a logic based on something like a perverse empathy. White New Yorkers saw the mistreatment of enslaved people in their city and they could not help but imagine what they would do if such an injustice were being done to them. They could not help but imagine all the violent retribution they would be justified in doing if their situation were reversed. And so they could not help but imagine that enslaved people were thinking the same thing — planning for it, plotting against them as they knew, deep down, they deserved to be plotted against:

The recognition — the stark, unavoidable knowledge — that enslaved New Yorkers were being subjected to an intolerable injustice wasn’t permitted to flow into a constructive form of empathy, so it was rechanneled into fear. And in 1741, that fear overheated in a fever of madness, the result of which was a string of public hangings and burnings at the stake. This brutal expression only compounded that initial fear by making the injustice even worse and thereby making an even clearer case for the semi-acknowledged justification of revolt.

I think this same fear, driven by the same perversely empathetic and only semi-consciously acknowledged recognition of injustice, is what drives white Americans’ desperate need for black Americans prompt, unqualified forgiveness.

That same fear also fuels white opposition to highly qualified, inspiring candidates like Stacy Abrams in Georgia or Andrew Gillum in Florida. It is the fear that if “they” are allowed to be “in charge,” then they may turn around and do to us what we have been doing to them. And even though those driven by this fear may not be able to admit or to articulate this to themselves, that fear is itself evidence — proof — that “we” know exactly what it is that we have been doing to them. We know that it is wrong, that it is unfair and unjust, and that it deserves to be corrected. And that it deserves to be punished.

There are only two ways of escaping that long-delayed and well-deserved punishment. One is to fight to preserve the injustice of the status quo, pressing down even harder and compounding the guilt. The other is to hope for forgiveness — to hope that those to whom we have never shown mercy will show mercy to us.

We know we need that forgiveness, desperately, and the realization that such forgiveness is out of our control drives us wild with fear. So we try to control it — to demand it, to mandate it and expect it. Because we know.

class warfare

justice

racism

Previous Post

November 5, 2018

Postcards from the class & culture wars (11.5.18)

Next Post

November 7, 2018 Orwell on why Donald Trump isn't quite a nationalist

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: The parable of the Good Samaritan is found in all four Gospels.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE