I’ve noticed a strange and offensive phenomenon in America.
When a black family loses a loved one to some type of racial terror — be it at the hands of police, white supremacists, or another angry caucasian, they are often asked a question that you rarely see asked of anyone else in a similar position.
Last week, before her son, Philando, had even been buried, his body riddled with bullets from a Minnesota police officer, Valerie Castile was asked live on CNN if she forgave the man who shot him.
Why in the hell would you ask her that? Has that man asked to be forgiven? Has he admitted that what he did was wrong? Has he repented and accepted some form of justice? Has he been arrested or charged with a crime? Has he reached out to the family to communicate his feelings about their unimaginable loss?
This woman is still trying to wrap her mind around how and why her son’s life was violently taken from this world. She doesn’t even have an official police report about the incident. A jury has not yet been convened. She hasn’t even been able to grieve at a funeral, and she’s been asked about forgiveness?
It’s an outrageous question that she should’ve never been cornered in to answering, but Valerie Castile minced no words in her response, “He took my son’s life. I don’t forgive him. Bottom line.”
Do you think any family members of the slain police officers in Dallas were asked this weekend if they forgive Micah Johnson?
On 9/12 did you see reporters asking people if they forgave Osama Bin Laden?
When Syed Farook and his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino and injured 22 others, nobody was rushing to ask people if they forgave him.
In other words, when the roles are reversed, and white people suffer any form of violence, it’s just common sense that you don’t ask them, particularly in the immediate aftermath, if they have forgiven their victimizer. You particularly don’t see this ridiculous question being asked of white people when a person of color was responsible for the violence.
It’s patently absurd. African-Americans, in essence, are expected to process and overcome their pain in a way that is both superhuman and irrational. It can take months or years, decades even, for some people to get to the point where they can sincerely say they forgive someone for how they’ve been wronged.
If someone cut off your son’s head today, would you forgive them tomorrow? If a stranger brutally raped and maimed your daughter today, would you forgive them later tonight? How about tomorrow or the next day? Would you be ready to forgive them in front of the nation then?
Of course you wouldn’t.
Yet that’s exactly what the victims of white supremacist Dylann Roof were asked on live television just days after he slaughtered their loved ones in a Charleston church.
Just stop it. Don’t rush our grief. And if you want forgiveness, earn it, and start providing some justice in this country.
