The media uses our public pain to continuously show the world our capacity to withstand superhuman levels of physical and emotional trauma

I hope that I am never in the situation that so many black families find themselves in. The most recent family is the family of the murdered Botham Jean, who was killed by an off-duty cop in his own home in 2018. She tried to cover up her wrongdoing and is now convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years of prison. It’s major because most police officers are never convicted of killing innocent black people. Botham’s brother, Brandt Jean, asked to hug the convicted killer, Amber Guyger and exclaimed that he forgave her and wished she didn’t have to serve jail time. The judge, a black woman, Tammy Kemp, also hugged the convicted killer. This happened to a convicted murderer after she was sentenced. This interaction, a judge hugging a black convicted killer, would never happen if the roles were reversed. There would probably be no trial because the black suspected murderer would’ve probably been killed at the scene. We truly have Stockholm Syndrome and it shows. The media uses our public pain to continuously show the world our capacity to withstand superhuman levels of physical and emotional trauma and we keep succumbing by giving them what they want tragedy after tragedy by forgiving groups who are not apologetic, disparage us via text message and kill us in our homes while eating ice cream.

Forgiveness is for yourself but doing so in a way that coddles the offender, absolving them from the opportunity to truly think about the consequences and ramifications of their actions is so dangerous and counterproductive to the equality so many black people claim to desperately want.

Black people are so used to receiving harsher jail sentences when we have made mistakes, we are used to receiving little to no compassion that when justice is actually served in our favor, we virtually apologize to the very people who are intent on destroying us. We are then expected to publicly forgive the people who put us in these situations in the first place. This expectation is something we put on ourselves because of religion and it has been a media narrative as if it is something black victims are supposed to do and this needs to stop.

We deserve to be treated with the same humanity that we too freely extend to those who repeatedly hurt us.

We have suffered through slavery, our children being ripped away from us, families torn apart, lynching, having our towns burned down by white mobs, income inequality, mass incarceration, institutional racism, and the lists go on and on but yet when faced with attacks, abuse and terrorism, we are expected to get over it and move on with little compassion from the masses. Forgiveness is for yourself but doing so in a way that coddles the offender, absolving them from the opportunity to truly think about the consequences and ramifications of their actions is so dangerous and counterproductive to the equality so many black people claim to desperately want. We deserve to be treated with the same humanity that we too freely extend to those who repeatedly hurt us.

Our sorrow and pain need to stop being commodified.

When we declare forgiveness over a white murderer who has taken our loved one, we are telling the world that this person, who has potentially done no internal work on their implicit biases, their bigotry, and/or outright hatred of black and brown people and the continual terrorism that has been inflicted upon us, is absolved of their wrongdoing and that we are disposable. Our forgiveness is pure but how it’s interpreted by those who don’t value us as weak and that is where my issues lie. Not everyone “deserves” us for a lack of a better phrase. I truly grew as a person when I had made mistakes with friends and family and wasn’t readily forgiven. Sometimes, it’s imperative to sit and live with the consequences of your actions especially a mistake as tragic as a killing.

Our public forgiveness sends a message that racist, hate-filled white people are free to walk into a black church, that welcomes all, shoot and kill 9 black people and you will have the opportunity to be taken into custody alive with fast food and a fair trial. This outward, public forgiveness is one of the reasons why this keeps happening. The consequence of killing us isn’t high. The mental and emotional labor seem to constantly fall on us. These types of people know that the punishment will not match the crime and they will have taken out their aggression on a people that will most likely passively extend a loving hand even after experiencing unimaginable immense emotional trauma. We don’t deserve this. No good person deserves this.

…we have to try and resist the urge of placating groups who consistently exhibit little to no remorse for hurting us and are empowered by receiving light sentences whilst destroying us and our families in the process.

Our sorrow and pain need to stop being commodified. We deserve to feel hurt, angry, mad and we need to demand and expect to have a private healing process. What if we were to say that we do not forgive our assailants? How would the narrative change about who we are as people? Why do we care? We are known for being welcoming but our kindness and our forgiveness have continuously being taken for weakness. We get to choose how we go about this process, but we need to internally remove the feeling of obligation that comes with public forgiveness. We do not owe the world anything. We don’t owe anybody anything especially the people who have created atrocities against us. We owe it to ourselves to work towards internal peace and to teach our children how to achieve this and focusing on our family’s overall healing and success, but we do not need to show the perpetrators anything externally.

We are a compassionate people. I am an overly sensitive and forgiving person, but we owe it to ourselves to remove the obligation of showing those who have shown no remorse public support. We need to stop extending our emotional labor on situations and people like the Amber Guyger’s of the world. We deserve private grieving and forgiveness. We deserve to be afforded the spectrum of human emotions everyone else is allowed to exhibit without recourse. What Brandt Jean did was possibly very healing during his personal grieving process and again, his decision to forgive Amber publicly was his choice, but we have to try and resist the urge of placating groups who consistently exhibit little to no remorse for hurting us and are empowered by receiving light sentences whilst destroying us and our families in the process.

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