Risking forgiveness after Charleston

Abstract

Confronted by the White supremacists who had murdered their loved ones in June 2015, many of the family members of those killed at Mother Immanuel AME Church spoke words of forgiveness. The families’ actions sparked sharp responses. In this essay, I will argue that critical responses misunderstood the practice of Black Christian forgiveness. I claim that Black Christian forgiveness is a practical political response to White supremacist violence, one richly grounded in the principles of personalism, the logic of nonviolence and a unique understanding of the meaning of the Christian gospel as a way to ‘redeem the soul of America’.

Considering sociocultural contexts of racism in psychological research on black forgiveness

“…Although forgiveness may be something that is practiced in a multitude of contexts, forgiveness as a construct is something that is culturally influenced (Sandage & Williamson, 2007), and forgiveness as a value is not prioritized to the same extent everywhere. For example, in a meta-analytic review of data from 30 countries, forgiveness was rated the eighth most important value out of 18 instrumental values on average.…”

“…One interpretation of Black Christian forgiveness is that it has its origins in the non‐violent protest tradition of the Civil Rights Movement. In this way, one goal of a public display of forgiveness is to target a sympathetic white conscience by juxtaposing a violent action with a peaceful response in order to highlight the true depth of racist hatred (Shepherd, 2019). Though we outlined earlier how forgiveness may have negative consequences for collective action towards justice (e.g., Greenaway et al., 2011; Wenzel & Okimoto, 2015), future work could investigate whether the presence or absence of apologies moderates this effect.…”