White Cornell Prof: 'Forgiveness in Charleston Isn't Absolution for 400 Years of Racial Violence in America'
"The killer remains at large, and the killer is us."
6.27.2015 |
News
| Trey Sanchez |
In an op-ed for the LA Times, white professor of U.S. history at Cornell University Edward E. Baptist blasted the outpouring of forgiveness by the families of the Charleston church victims, saying in no way does that make up for hundreds of years of violence against blacks.
His beef began with a statement by Republican Rick Santorum who said he sees hope in the way the families of the Charleston Nine all showed forgiveness to the shooter. But Baptist said what was missing from Santorum's remarks was gun control and anti-racism education.
"Whatever Santorum might believe, the family members' statements will not deliver white Americans to some misty land where they no longer have to hear about the impact of nearly 400 years of racist violence," he writes.
What Baptist wants to hear is more anger and outrage to fuel social justice, not forgiveness and then moving on with one's life. He points to a Manhattan reverend, William Barber, who said about the shooter Dylann Roof, "The perpetrator has been caught [but] the killer remains at large."
"Roof," Baptist writes, "explosively acted out a disdain for black life that is all too pervasive in American society."
Baptist then leaves behind his chosen field of history and attempts a theological explanation of Biblical forgiveness and the grace of God:
The victims' families are struggling with the private business of their own grief, using the language of Christian grace. This starts with the belief that God can forgive all sins. In turn, believers should try to do the same for the sake of their own souls and their own desire to live in harmony with God.
What too many whites seem to demand from these families' statements, however, isn't really grace. As the journalist Jamelle Bouie pointed out, people like Santorum insist on what the German theologian and anti-Nazi freedom fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace" — the "preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance" from those who have sinned. The forgiveness they want is so cheap that I can only call it "Wal-Mart grace": low-priced but shoddy, destructive of real community and built on exploitation.
Then, Baptist addresses his own kind and doles out a hefty portion of white guilt to check his reader's white privilege:
My fellow white Americans, I know this will discomfit some of you, but Barber was right: The killer remains at large, and the killer is us. Collectively we remain committed to beliefs and behaviors that result in the destruction of black lives.
There are wrongs perpetrated by individuals driven mad by white fears. There are wrongs perpetrated by those who act in our name, with the blessing of white fears. That's why white people in the U.S. shouldn't grab for Wal-Mart grace. Instead, they should take this occasion to consider whether they are complicit in our long history of white supremacy. It would be wise to start by listening to what nonwhite people have to say about the ways in which white privilege works to disadvantage them and advantage us.
For some, that will be a new and uncomfortable experience. Yet if white Americans want reconciliation, they will have to brave the dangers of atonement. And so what if there is danger? Because of what whites do or leave undone, living while black has always been far more dangerous than it should be. For African Americans, violent death has too often been the cost of standing up for black life. Sometimes death has even been the cost of kneeling in prayer.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/white-cornell-prof-forgiveness-charleston-isnt-absolution-400-years-racial-violence-america
