This week, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had a hearing in a federal courtroom, where he was officially sentenced to death and given an opportunity to make a statement to the court. The event comes on the heels of last week’s tragedy in Charleston, and has some people wondering how we value and deploy “forgiveness” in this country.
Same folks that get dewy-eyed at Charleston families’ forgiveness get bloody-minded at the thought of not executing Tsarnaev.
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) June 25, 2015
The tweet by Saladin Ahmed, author of the award-winning fantasy novel “Throne of the Crescent Moon,” touched upon an idea explored in a handful of recent articles. In a piece titled “Black America should stop forgiving white racists,” Stacey Patton writes in the Washington Post:
Forgiveness has become a requirement for those enduring the realities of black death in America. Black families are expected to grieve as a public spectacle, to offer comfort, redemption, and a pathway to a new day. The parents of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Mike Brown and the widow of Eric Garner were all asked in interviews if they’d forgive the white men who killed their loved one.
…the almost reflexive demand of forgiveness, especially for those dealing with death by racism, is about protecting whiteness, and America as a whole. This is yet another burden for black America.
After 9/11, there was no talk about forgiving al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. America declared war, sought blood and revenge, and rushed protective measures into place to prevent future attacks.
As the Atlantic Monthly, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates noted on Twitter: “Can’t remember any campaign to ‘love’ and ‘forgive’ in the wake of ISIS beheadings.”
No one expects Jewish people to forgive the Nazis or contemporary anti-Semitic acts. But black people are held to an impossibly higher standard. This rush to forgive — before grieving, healing, processing or even waiting for the legal or judicial systems to process these crimes — and the expectations of black empathy for those who do great harm is deeply problematic.
I heard about Tsarnaev’s statement on the radio. In the twenty-one-year-old’s first public statement in the two years since the bombing and subsequent car chase that resulted in four deaths, he apologized to the victims and survivors for “the lives I have taken, for the suffering that I have caused you, for the damage I have done – irreparable damage.”
The radio coverage about his statement was quickly followed by reactions from some of the victims, one of whom expressed anger at what she believed was a disingenuous, insincere apology: “He just threw in an apology to the victims, but he kept talking about Allah, and hoping that Allah will have mercy on him.” Her rage was palpable, as was that of twenty-four other individuals who delivered “victim impact statements” following Tsarnaev’s death sentence:
“While your intention was to destroy America, what you have really accomplished is actually quite the opposite — you’ve unified us. We are Boston strong, we are America strong, and choosing to mess with us was a terrible idea. So how’s that for your VICTIM impact statement?” – Rebekah Gregory, lost a leg in the bombing
“He is a leech abusing the privilege of American freedom, and he spit in the face of the American dream.” – Jennifer Rogers, sister of slain MIT officer Sean Collier
“He can’t possibly have had a soul to do such a horrible thing.” – Karen Rand McWatters, best friend of Krystle Campbell (one of the three people killed) and also lost her own leg in the bombing
Of course, it is only natural for the pain of victims, survivors, and their loved ones to run deep, and for the response to these sorts of incidents to be driven by rage, anger, and a desire for revenge.
Yet the rhetoric being used to discuss the Charleston and Boston cases, both of which claimed the lives of innocent victims, is decidedly different. As Daily Show host Jon Stewart explained following the Charleston shooting in a poignant monologue on his June 18, 2015 show, “what blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us, and us killing ourselves.”
If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our — we invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over five or six different countries, all to keep Americans safe. We got to do whatever we can. We’ll torture people. We gotta do whatever we can to keep Americans safe.
Nine people shot in a church. What about that? “Hey, what are you gonna do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?” That’s the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around, and you know it. You know that it’s going to go down the same path. “This is a terrible tragedy.” They’re already using the nuanced language of lack of effort for this. This is a terrorist attack. This is a violent attack on the Emanuel Church in South Carolina, which is a symbol for the black community. It has stood in that part of Charleston for 100 and some years and has been attacked viciously many times, as many black churches have.
Why is there such a stark difference in the way we speak about these tragedies? Is it because the Boston Marathon bombing was such a public and horrific spectacle, injuring over 200 and leaving devastating carnage in its wake? Is it because twenty-one-year-old Dylann Roof, the Emanuel Church shooter, is a white American, while Dhzokar Tsarnaev, as some victim testimonies emphasized, was an immigrant from Russia, who enjoyed the benefits of living in the United States, “abused the privilege of American freedom,” and then attacked American citizens? Is it because black rage, as Stacey Patton writes, is “challenged as inappropriate and unhelpful,” whereas white rage is expected, excused, and understood?
Rage, in this country, is not something everyone is entitled to feel. If you are always worried about being the Angry Arab, the Angry Muslim, the Angry Black Woman, the Angry Indian or Pakistani or Latino, then you understand this well. Minority groups constantly have to evaluate how their rage reflects poorly on their race, their ethnicity, their religious group or affiliation, while white people are given the space to grieve and scream and feel anger and exercise their humanity, as individuals, without fear their actions will be viewed as representative of their entire race.
When the parents of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are made to mourn publicly and asked to forgive their children’s killers, but Kim Goldman can write a book entitled “Can’t Forgive” about her refusal to forgive O.J. Simpson for the murder of her brother Ron, it becomes difficult to deny the double standards and racial implications of how tragedy is dealt with and responded to in this country.
The uncomfortable, but increasingly blatant, reality seems to point in one direction: rage is a white privilege.