Everything Matters
Learning to Forgive
By Patrice Gaines
Thursday, March 20, 2008
I teach a workshop on forgiveness. It’s not a simple subject to teach and even as the teacher, I am always learning. But considering some recent controversies involving politicians, there are some major points worth sharing.
For one, forgiveness is a process; often times, a very long process. And two: Incidents are occurring all the time that are really opportunities for healing, though they may be disguised in chaos or controversy.
I thought of these teachings when I heard the furor over the comments made by Geraldine Ferraro, who was on the finance committee for the Sen. Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Ferraro, once a vice presidential candidate, said, “If [Sen. Barack] Obama was a White man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position.”
The comment had a familiar ring because in 1988 Ferraro said something similar about Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was running for president. She said that considering his “radical” views, “if Jesse Jackson were not Black he wouldn’t be in the race.”
To me, it is incredible that 20 years after making the first remark, Ferraro still believes that America sometimes gives Black men a pass that allows them to receive preferential treatment. Yet after Ferraro stepped down from her position on Clinton’s finance committee, the discussions about her comments stopped.
It was another missed opportunity for healing. We could have had some honest public dialogue about how is it that someone with a respected career as a politician and civic servant could believe any Black man receives preferential treatment. And why is it that I—and most of the Black people I know--can’t stretch our imaginations far enough to believe the same?
After all, one report after another, shows that Black men suffer far worse health than any racial group, live about seven years less than anyone else and are incarcerated at the rate of 3,042 Black males per 100,000 Black males; while White males are incarcerated at the rate of 487 White men per 100,000.
The next opportunity to heal is before us as I write this. It is cloaked in the guise of passionate sermons by Obama’s former pastor. The Sunday sermons of Dr Jeremiah A. Wright are being played all over YouTube and Fox TV.
Obama was questioned about his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ, where one of Wright’s sermons included these words: “The government gives them (Black people) the drugs. Builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing, ‘God bless America.’ No, no, no. God damn America…”
It was obvious that most reporters who questioned Obama about Wright wanted him to denounce the pastor, the man who had married him and baptized his children. Yet videos showed large audiences standing and cheering Wright’s sermons. Shouldn’t we ask why?
Why is it that so many Black people still believe the government is against them? Why do these Black people feel their country does not love them as deeply as it does White people?
But no one is asking these questions. People are picking at the skeletons, but no one is getting to the meat.
In Australia in February the government issued an apology to the Aborigines for more than a century of mistreatment. Understandably, some Aborigines dismissed the apology and continue to demand compensation for their generations of mistreatment. As I said: “Forgiveness is a process.”
But at least the Australians and the Aborigines are having a public dialogue.
We can’t keep turning away from the real questions. If there is going to ever be true forgiveness between Black and White people, and the replacement of love with fear, we have to seize these opportunities to heal. We can’t settle for rhetoric or questions that don’t lead to real answers.
Patrice Gaines is an author and the co-founder of The Brown Angel Center, a program in Charlotte, N.C. that helps formerly incarcerated women become financially independent.