Forgiveness as oppression?

Forgiveness is an intimate thing. To offer grace to a person is to look inward and find peace and to offer that peace externally. Or at least it can be. Forgiveness can be a religious or moral imperative. For some it is less a choice and more a mandate, while for others it is a guiding principle that feels right. Whatever my thoughts on forgiveness I know it is a deeply personal thing.

Personal as it is, I have noticed, that there seems to be a double standard regarding forgiveness both in who should proffer it and when it should be given. So strangely does it emerge that I can’t tell how much of the norms we all adhere to are an external expectation we have been conditioned to oblige or an internal one we hold ourselves to.

I notice it most with black people and women. And where those two things overlap it becomes the nexus of a forgiveness venn diagram that I shudder against.

In the wake of the South Carolina Massacre there was a volley of forgiveness offered. In the wake of the initial judge invoking the “victimhood” of Roof’s family and friends, (even before the burial of all of the actual victims) survivors and the families of the murdered, showed a grace I cannot fathom, a grace I hope I never need to know.

When Mo’Ne Davis, the 13-year-old champion softball pitcher, was called a slut by a college athlete a few months ago, she quickly forgave him and went out of her way to request his scholarship reinstatement from the university that revoked it (they resolutely declined). And in the wake of all of the media fervor, social and video, everyone praised her for it.

I remember thinking, “she’s a way better person than me.” I may even have lamented that I didn’t have it in me to do what she did. Jezebel and a myriad of tweets and articles applauded her benevolence. We collectively agreed that she was on the high road and we should all aspire to walk on that same road.

Except, maybe we shouldn’t.

There were a few voices that did not blame Mo’Ne but used her forgiveness and our collective applauding of it, to critique what we are supporting when we encourage a child to rally for her tormentor.  Mo’Ne is young, her whole life she has taken her lessons and cues from all of us grown folks who should know better. Her prompt forgiveness showed us what she’d learned.

We encouraged a girl-child to offer protection to the man who was verbally abusing her. We praised her for it, proving, in case she had any doubt, that it was the right thing to do. 

These two things are linked in my brain now: the massacre and Mo’Ne. I find myself talking about them as if they are the same event. 

Yes, I realize that murder and name calling are in no way equal, but I believe that the same impetus drives both situations. They do share common threads. 

In both cases there is an absolution for the perpetrator without anything…not even a heartfelt apology. In both cases we extol those that were most harmed for forgiving those who harm the most.

A few days ago when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial ended and he stood up to apologize for the Boston bombing there was a great deal of righteous rage from survivors and families. They were hurt two years ago…are still hurting. They are angry. There is little talk of forgiveness and even less expectation that there should be.

I hope everyone offering forgiveness in South Carolina is doing so without fear or guilt or pressure of any kind. I hope it is truly a personal act that helps in their healing. At the same time, I hope that in the future, black people and women take a little more time before we offer up blanket forgiveness for any number of attacks against our bodies and minds. 

Forgiveness is as much about the person giving it as it is about the person receiving it, I get that, still…I wish we’d give ourselves as much latitude to grieve and rage as we provide the transgressors in grace.

They call our children “thugs,” “nappy-headed hos,” “cunts,” and “sluts,” and we teach them to forgive. And when they kill our children, like animals, then their parents are asked to forgive the murderers.

You see how “forgiveness” sometimes operates as part of the paradigm of oppression, and how their hatred has no regard for age? – Dr. Stacey Patton

Rage

I was raised in mixed company. Really mixed company. A military brat, my rearing was in more than simply black and white. More than other ethnicities, we were mixes of those ethnicities. So I grew up with a myriad of friends that looked a myriad of ways. In that group were white friends…in the truest sense of the word. I grew up with white friends both before and after I recognized their whiteness in the highly racialized world we inhabit, before they recognized my blackness.

Even so, I went through a super militant phase in the seventh or eighth grade- I consider it an American rite of passage, learning our unedited history, and railing against it.  I don’t remember what triggered my rite, but I remember explaining to my classmate why he couldn’t call me colored. And I remember walking out of Mr. Evan’s class after I asked him to stop using the word negro and he responded, “negroes, darkies, whatever you want to call ‘em.”

I had another, more nuanced militant…or maybe conscious is a better word…phase in college…after I read A Taste of Power. It was all mixed up with realization about misogyny and power dynamics.

All said and done, I settled on the mostly moderate side of life. My friends remain multi-culti, my outlook tends to lean towards trying to understand things…especially if everyone is telling me my logic is flawed. I want to understand. 

Still, I’m at my limit. 

My sister maintains people like us are the canaries in the coal mine. We are nothing that Fox News assumes about people of color who rail against being victimized, people of color who do not suspend reality to avoid calling racism what it is. We are not "conspiracy theorists". We are not segregated in small pockets of blackness at the exclusion of the rest of the world (by our doing or other's). Our white friends are not mythical -they come to dinner, we travel together, we sleep at each other’s houses, we know each other’s families. We defy all the excuses put forth to undermine and ignore justified rage. 

And I am enraged.

I usually have staid conversations about race, tempering my fatigue and distaste for having to explain why carrying a bag of skittles is not punishable by death for other people. I am the person who shares how my high school student council advisor asked me if there would be a lot of black people at the rodeo, because if there were “too many” he wouldn’t feel comfortable taking his wife. The same man who assured me he “taught” another black student how to be black. I’ve had people touch my hair, reaching out through the buffered space that strangers generally keep, and feeling perfectly at home invading my personal space. I’ve explained that, “no, I don’t use car grease in my hair.” I’ve had teachers accuse me of plagiarism because they didn’t believe I could have written my essay, hell, I had teachers attempt to put me in remedial classes despite having my test scores and previous school’s records on hand.

But I’ve managed to remain calm. I’ve managed to keep my fits of anger and frustration, mostly, to myself. But now I’m tired. This canary is flapping its wings. 

I am tired of recycling conversations that end up laying blame at the riggored foot of another black victim. I am tired of excuses and the benefit of the doubt given in every situation except the ones that involve people who look like me.

I know exactly where the racial load that America is intent on thrusting upon colored people, bent to breaking. It wasn’t Mckinney or Eric Garner. It wasn’t my dad being held up by police in our neighborhood or my college boyfriend being scarred from where the police smashed his face into the hood of the police car. I broke when Zimmerman was acquitted. 

That was my moment. That was the moment that I looked America in the eye, and, without blinking, America assured me that what I had feared all along was true…black lives don’t matter. 

And so today was another day. Another horrible day confirming what I already know…that when black lives lay in pools of blood, the perpetrator was “sick” or “unstable” or “a loner”. When I hear those words I know the outcome of any case that might be brought to trial, any conversation that might be had in social media.

 

I know how it will end. Confederate flag flying or not…it will end with the expectation that black people should forgive all slights, no matter how egregious. It will end with the media calling for peace and gentle conversations. It will end with another mother crying, another father, another child. And…more likely than not…it will end with justice as elusive as the post-racial world folks keep assuring me we live in right now. 

My wings are tired.

The storm -The Agean Sea

I giggled to myself. I bounced a little in my bunk. The light suffused around me. It was no longer dark but hardly seemed like daylight. Phone buried in my bag at the foot of my bed, I didn’t want to look for my phone, unsure I wanted to know the time. I bumped around some more in the grayness and decided the bathroom wouldn’t wait. Resting my foot on the nightstand built into the wall, I scrambled down as noiselessly as possible so as not to wake Anne, sleeping peacefully (it seemed) in the bunk below.

My narrow perch was the result of my own selfishness. For a time I was certain we'd be adding a third person to our closet-sized room and the bottom bunk was a double bed. Not wanting to sleep with a stranger- in the literal, if not biblical sense - I volunteered for the skyward perch just shy of the low wood paneled ceiling.

Calmer waters

Finally down from my bunk, my biological needs met, I meandered to the bow of the ship to contemplate the late night or early morning...whichever I happened to be experiencing. A light rain fell onto the already saturated blue cushions, despite the canvas awning hoisted above. Not wishing to be wet or for the cold that follows wetness without sun, I walked quietly back to my room and nestled down in anticipation of sunup and breakfast and the general start of the day.

The next time I woke the waves, far from gentle, roused me from sleep. I lay listening to the wind and water outside the tiny window open by my head. The colored curtains flitted forward in brief intervals allowing more air in the room. The morning was warmer than it had been the previous night.

It was fun. A minor roller-coaster ride with expected twists and turns. And then there was a thump. The boat dipped low and I flew ceiling-ward, suspended in air for a long second before making contact with the mattress again. The fun was momentarily lost. Suddenly, Erik Larson's Isaac’s Storm, came to mind. Yesterday I'd been reading about the 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed more than 8000 people. True to Larson's style, there are vivid descriptions of boats creaking loudly as they strained against wind and water, much like the boat was now creaking.

Roller-coaster no longer, this was a motorcycle set free downhill, no railing.

Not usually prone to motion sickness, my stomach lurched a little and I was unsure if it was the raucous motion that stretched seemingly endless before me or if was simply hunger.

Anne continued to sleep below and the boat continued to lurch and skip across waves, dive into the bottom of the swells and then rise again on uncertain legs. I joined Anne in intermittent sleep, waking with a start with any bumps of heightened intensity, and then drifting back to sleep with hopes that the unsettled feeling that left my stomach considering the idea of releasing whatever contents lingered from the previous night’s meal, mulling it over but uncertain of where it seemed to land on the matter.

Hot, drops of rain or wave pelting my face startled me awake a final time. I checked the clock on my kindle, well past breakfast, I wondered if I had slept through it, wondered how they might have managed to serve it given the uncertain footing and listing.

Mary was perched in her bed with the door propped open, eager to discuss the morning’s travails: her vomiting, and “the bullshit of it all”. I reminded her that no one, not even a Turkish sailor can control the weather (she reluctantly agreed) and then I wandered to the front cabin.

We were a hodgepodge there. Some who'd been awake since 6am with hopes of seeing the sunrise (they didn't), others too sick to stay in their cabins and praying for calm or solid ground. When I asked about breakfast there were giggles at my predictability (one day at sail and everyone already knew my appetite) and assurances that in our current predicament no breakfast had presented itself.

I sat outside on the bow, the fresh air calming my stomach, and watched as the indigo waters swelled and sprayed salty mist at us with accurate aim. The lounge cushions secured to the front of the boat with red rope, ignored their moorings and flew backwards, arching for sea. The heavy wooden chairs used at meals, heaved occupants forward ad landed with a clatter on the deck.

Finally a city emerged in the distance, hugging the coast, climbing upward toward sky. We anchored in a little cove, the calm waters a welcome respite from the six hours we'd been tossed in all morning.

The crew, no English spoken among them, looked nonplussed. They scrambled to restore order but did so laughing. Most pressing needs met, they readied the ladder so we could swim while they prepared breakfast.

I jumped in the water, holding my nose, anticipating the shock of cold water hitting my skin, but after a few moments, my body temperature dropping to meet the turquoise water, it was pleasant. Salt saturation buoyed me to the surface and for a little while the morning's chaos was forgotten.

Back on the boat, drying myself in the warmth of a slightly muted but delightfully strong sun, one of the passengers chuckled to himself. When pressed about the humor he pointed at the city in the distance, "that city is an hour and a half by bus from where we started this thing." All I could do is laugh with him.

Balloon sunrise- Cappadocia

I lay in the dark, unappreciative of the quiet, warmed to discomfort by the heater. Padding, first to the bathroom and then to turn off the heater, I laid down and waited for 5am –the time I was supposed to wake up. When 5am came and went, I waited for 5:45, when the balloon tour was supposed to pick me, and the three Argentinians, up. I sat outside in the brisk predawn air. My Kindle glowed a slight blue light and my head swiveled every time I saw headlights bounce over the stone gate.

By 6, I began to wonder who to call and if we'd miss sunrise. By 6:15 I was certain we'd been forgotten. Ten minutes later and a gruff driver pulled up with a dull and slightly impatient expression plastered to his face.

The ride to the launch site was short, a few turns and the balloons -in various stages of life - emerged. A few were already high over the horizon, their bright colors washed out in the emerging light. Some were mostly flat, their baskets the only upright form to them. Mine was almost filled, the balloon expanded and bobbing above a basket already filled with people.

I waited until last to climb in, a seeming generosity that was actually self-serving. The last person in, someone shared with me the previous day, ensures the coveted corner spot - ripe for pictures.

The cool air and quiet morning were intermittently shattered by the flash of blue flame roaring in our ears and singeing the exposed parts of my scalp; a welcome and terrifying warmth that made me wonder if my hair would have gone up in spiraled flame had I worn it loose.

Balloons all around us began to drift skyward, graceful like children’s bubbles caught in the wind.

My balloon finally joined them...rising, barely at first, then more steadily…with a collective inhalation of breath- joy and excitement and wonder. More roaring blue flame, more height.

I watched the horizon, broken by the jagged landscape of fairy chimneys, waiting for the sun to escape skyward. And it did, balloons dotted in front of it like party favors. We floated that way for a while, sometimes high in the clear blue sky, sometimes skirting the valleys below-close enough, it seemed, to touch the grass and rock, to jump out uninjured. And when the time came to land, we were pulled down into a field of oats. men who had been following us in a van since we first floated skyward, pulled on heavy ropes, held us steady, dragged the basket- making erratic crop designs in the field.

Champagne topped off our flight- champagne and it wasn't even 7am.