The United States has not forgotten how to forgive — and that’s a problem
Remember Ariana Grande’s donut-licking incident in 2015?
Fox News probably talked about nothing but the “anti-America” popstar for months. Despite apologizing, Grande was blacklisted nationwide for saying, “I hate America.” She remains detested by the Republican Party today, with one GOP congressman even noting that she got off easier than Donald Trump because of America’s “double standards.”
Indeed, the United States has a double standard of forgiveness but not in the way the GOP congressman suggested. Today, the U.S. treads this line of “forgetting and forgiving” whatever happens in the past but only when the past involves the oppression of marginalized communities — slavery, Japanese internment camps and the Trail of Tears, just to name a few.
In a recent op-ed published by The Atlantic titled “America Has Forgotten How to Forgive,” staff writer Graeme Wood discusses the resignation of Alexi McCammond from her yet-to-begin role as editor in chief of Teen Vogue. The resignation followed the reemergence of McCammond’s anti-Asian social media posts from when she was 17. Wood questions McCammond’s resignation: Is it necessary, or can we just move on with a pardon for reckless, naive teenage behavior?
This discussion of forgiveness and accountability dates back to other controversies, such as the student whose Harvard admission was rescinded following the emergence of group chats where he used racial slurs. However, these controversies still ultimately speak to the double standard of forgiveness in the U.S. On one end, we flaunt forgiveness as a virtue and prerequisite for moving forward, especially when it is convenient for white people as a means to relinquish their guilt. On the other end, we prioritize capital punishment and a relentless lack of compassion for those convicted of crimes — and those who are not white.
Although Wood’s article discusses maneuvering racist comments made by McCammond when she was a teenager, to say “America has forgotten how to forgive” is ironic. Of course, everyone deserves the opportunity to learn and grow, but not while in positions of power, such as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue. If McCammond were to keep the position after the resurfacing of the racist comments, that would simply be excusing the behavior in and of itself.
After all, the U.S. has not forgotten how to forgive by any means, considering the varying reactions to the white man who killed six Asian women in Atlanta two weeks ago. In a press conference, Cherokee County Sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker remarked about the shooter — who committed a hate crime — “yesterday was a really bad day for him.”
Rightfully so, the comments sparked outrage; lo and behold, the captain had reposted a racist t-shirt on his Facebook back in March 2020. From this single manifestation of white supremacy, we know this same theme of compassion would not even fester if the shooter was anything but white and his victims were not part of a community that is historically oppressed and vilified in the U.S.
For another example, remember when that white cop shot the Black man in his own apartment while he was eating ice cream because she thought it was her apartment? After she was sentenced, the media circulated photos of the woman hugging the Black judge and the victim’s brother. Absolutely, forgiveness is alive and well in the U.S., but it seems that forgiveness only reappears as a central argument when it functions as a mechanism to dissolve the racial divide and absolve white guilt.
On the other hand, we consider incarceration a prime way of dealing accountability yet turn a blind eye to its embedded violence and corruption. We are ruthless and hungry for retribution, considering isolation from society as the solution for crime rather than rehabilitation. Not to mention the fact that the justice system denotes the death penalty as the ultimate punishment, which disproportionately impacts Black men.
Maybe we have forgotten to forgive because capitalism revolves around greed. Ronald Reagan’s and Bill Clinton’s “tough on crime” policies over-policed Black and Brown neighborhoods to funnel vulnerable populations into the prisons so they could be exploited. Specifically, the War on Drugs introduced minor drug crime bills and “three-strikes” rules that targeted Black men. If we actually wanted to “forgive” inmates, we would restructure the system and rehabilitate them instead of subjecting them to the suffering that is mass incarceration.
In fact, I recently read “Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Davis. The book is a crash course on the prison industrial complex. In simplest terms, corporations privatize prisons to exploit cheap prison labor and maximize profit. Prisons do not help inmates but merely seek to profit off of them.
I mention this because if we want to talk about forgiveness, we should be talking about abolishing the prison industrial complex and restructuring our justice system to reorient our entire capitalist economy. This would involve disseminating police budgets, investing that money back into communities, paying reparations to those afflicted by institutionalized racism and implementing universal healthcare and education.
This paradigm is not only limited to the carceral system. We brandish lines such as “Never Forget” on every anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — no forgiveness because President George W. Bush implemented the War on Terror to punish entire countries of innocent people and consequently instilled anti-Muslim hatred in our cultural framework. But because “America has forgotten to forgive,” are we waiting for the people impacted by Islamophobia to shrug it off and hug their white neighbors so they feel better about themselves?
If we want to talk about the U.S.’s inability to forgive, maybe we could talk about the U.S.’s inability to empathize and its psychopathic tendencies. These manifest in the form of: cruel border camps and deportations that separate families, no universal health care, no forgiveness for student debt because “I paid my students loans, so everyone else should.”
Meanwhile, every time a white man belligerently shoots up a church, grocery store or school, he does not die — he just had a “really bad day.” Politicians refuse to take gun control action because their paychecks come from the NRA. The Los Angeles Police Department spends more money trying to exile the unhoused from Echo Park instead of using that money toward sheltering them. Our government cannot even muster the empathy for the children who fear going to school because they may get shot, or the mothers who resent going to the grocery store, or the teenagers who tremble at the thought of going to the movie theater because no place is safe.
The U.S. hasn’t forgotten to forgive. The U.S. has forgotten how to earn forgiveness.
Matthew Eck is a junior writing about hot-button social issues. His column, “The Eck’s Factor,” runs every other Wednesday.