Musings on forgiveness: The personal and the political
Commentary by Chitown Kev
forgiveness is a part of Black American life. otherwise we'd have all gone insane long ago.
mallyroyal
Forgiveness.
It's an easy word to say, a simple suggestion to and for others, but so very difficult for me to practice.
One of my character flaws is that I have a tendency to hold on to grudges; sometimes for a very long time. The feeling and emotion of personal offense sometimes outlasts any memory of the real or imagined offense.
At times, I can channel the energy charge that I get from anger and resentment into something useful or positive; far more often than I like to admit, though, I just get "stuck."
And then The Universe drags me into practicing forgiveness, to the best of my ability. And yes, I leave "claw marks" everywhere.
The psychological benefits of forgiveness are well known to the medical profession.
•Healthier relationships
•Greater spiritual and psychological well-being
•Less anxiety, stress and hostility
•Lower blood pressure
•Fewer symptoms of depression
•Stronger immune system
•Improved heart health
•Higher self-esteem
Frankly, when I saw
the video of loved one after loved one of the nine people killed in the white supremacist terrorist attack on Mother Emanuel tell the murderer that they forgave him in spite of the pain and loss that they suffered at his hands, I felt like an intruder.
Forgiveness seems, at least to me, every bit as much a personal and intimate act as the original "trespass." The practice of forgiveness as public spectacle just doesn't sit right with me (and this would also be true of the 2005 Amish school shootings in Lancaster County, PA).
What I did recognize, though, was the Christianity that I learned as a child when I went (with my aunt and uncle) to The Greater Bethlehem Temple on West Chicago Boulevard in Detroit.
Recently, I talked to an acquaintance of mine who also happens to be a deacon at a Chicago-area Church of God in Christ (COGIC, for short, a predominately African-American denomination) about forgiveness in both personal and political contexts. The one thing that J. said that really sticks with this agnostic is his reminder that, "they didn't forgive that young man because they were African-American, they forgave that young man because they were Christians and that's what Christians are instructed to do."
Yes. Different denominations, perhaps, but some of the same things that I learned growing up in that now abandoned church on West Chicago Boulevard in Detroit.
I have no idea what goes on in the homes some of the white evangelical "Religious Right."
But like the Washington Post's Stacey Patton, I do remember what Religious Right leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were preaching in the aftermath the September 11th attacks. The ideas and theology of Christian forgiveness wasn't one of those things.
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.
In 2010, Ta-Nehisi Coates was
pretty frank about this matter of African-American forgiveness
And yet I am thankful that to a member of community that is wiser than me, one that understands that ideals are just that when they have no guns to back them up. These people are not noble. To the contrary, they have always been coldly opportunistic. They are forgiving because they have common sense. They are forgiving because they do not have the weaponry to be any other way.
Yes, there is much truth and common sense in what Coates says but, damn, that's a pessimistic outlook.
Maybe the weapon (if I can call it that) of forgiveness can enable me to leave stuff like the 40-year old grudge against a homophobic uncle or the 4-hour old grudge at the guy that stepped on my (flip-flopped!) toe on The Red Line this morning or the resentment against the racism practiced by the Clintons during 2008 Democratic primary campaign on the side of the road or some of the more bombastic statements that emanate from The Black Church: just leave it all on the side of the road and drive on.
It's better. And healthier.
Those old church brothers and sisters may have been right, after all.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The Republicans and their dead ender problem. The New Republic: The Republican Party Is Still Trying to Decide if Minorities Matter.
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The Republican party has had well-documented difficulty making inroads with minority voters since the 2012 election. It's probably more accurate to say that since the 2012 election Republicans have been engaged in a quiet and unresolved debate amongst themselves over which of the following three strategic courses to pursue:
1) Making genuine, substantive concessions to minority voters.
2) Making symbolic and rhetorical concessions to minority voters, without making significant changes to the GOP's substantive agenda.
3) Making no concessions to minority voters whatsoever, in the hope of increasing the GOP's already sizeable margins among white voters.
Two developments in the past month; the mass killing of black worshippers by a white supremacist at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, and the launch of Donald Trump's presidential campaign;have thrown into stark relief how badly option one lost out to options two and three. The ongoing Republican presidential primary has become a contest to determine which of the latter two approaches the party will adopt in the general election next year.
museum.
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There's excitement on the streets at the president's visit, which offers a chance to mend strained relations with the west. The Guardian: Barack Obama goes back to Kenya: 'It's like JFK going back to Ireland'.
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The silver-grey walls of the Godown Arts Centre, a sprawling converted car repair warehouse that offers a home to many of Nairobi's most creative minds, usually feature a rotating cast of murals celebrating sports stars, freedom fighters and screen sirens such as the Oscar-winning Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong'o.
In recent weeks all those figures have been overshadowed by the likeness of one man. At the gate a whole section is taken up by a full-face painting of President Barack Obama looking into the distance and wearing a wistful expression.
In the warrens of cubicles in the theatre, the star painting is an acrylic and oil portrait of Obama, seated on a still growing tree in a lime-green jungle, striking the pose of a Roman emperor with his shoeless feet dipping into a stream. "We are very excited about his visit," says Evans Yegon, 30, who painted the portrait. "We are just curious to see how things will be and we just can't wait."
Kenya is in the grip of Obama-mania. For weeks, newspapers have led with numerous articles describing preparations for the trip at the end of the month and analysing its importance. Readers have been inundated with every detail about efforts to keep Obama safe, with tales about his limousine, "a tank on four wheels"(the Star), a favourite.
Senator Barack Obama holds his step-grandmother Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama on a visit to his ancestral rural village of Kogelo in Kenya in August 2006. Photograph: Radu Sigheti/Reuters
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With more eyes than ever on African art, Fondation Cartier's expansive Beauté Congo exhibition showcases earliest paintings to today's vibrant, political works. The Guardian: Paris hosts first ever retrospective of art from Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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There is a tradition in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that artists hang their paintings on the outsides of their studios, for the whole world walking by to look at.
Some paintings reflect the very streets where they hang – bars filled with music and dancing, streets overcrowded with rusting cars and elegant sapeurs strutting down the pavements, bejewelled and bedecked in flamboyant outfits. Others depict a utopia, a vision of the DRC that has left behind the conflict, poverty and corruption of the past century. Almost all are steeped in politics.
It is these paintings, and other artworks stretching back 90 years, that are to form the first ever retrospective of art from the DRC. Opening on Saturday at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the expansive show incorporates 350 paintings, photographs, sculptures and comic books from 41 different artists.
Most of these works have never been displayed internationally, having sat among private collections in Belgium, France and Switzerland, while others were dug out from colonial archives in Brussels and a few brought over from Kinshasa, direct from the artists themselves.
La Vraie Carte du Monde, by Chéri Samba, 2011. Photograph: Chéri Samba/Fondation Cartier
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This is another reason why ending the pipelines to prison is so important. Color Lines: Report: Girls of Color Who Survive Abuse Frequently End Up in Prison.
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A new report from Human Rights Project for Girls, the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, and the Ms. Foundation for Women reveals that previous abuse is the most significant contributing cause for the arrest and incarceration of girls of color, who make up about two-thirds of all imprisoned young women.
"The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls' Story"shows that while girls are rarely arrested for violent crimes, they tend to be picked up and detained for offenses associated with escaping abuse, such as truancy, curfew violations and running away. In short: when girls flee abuse, they tend to get locked up. And girls of color are suffering disproportionately: Black girls make up 14 percent of the population, but 33.2 percent of the girls who are detained. And while Native American girls account for 1 percent of all youth, they are 3.5 percent of those detained.
The study authors collected state data that tell the sad tale of imprisoned girls who ended up there following sexual violence. In South Carolina, 81 percent of girls in the juvenile justice system are survivors. In Florida, 84 percent of girls suffered family violence. Among girls in the California system, 81 percent have been sexually or physically abused.
It dosen't end there: When black and brown girls are trafficked for sex, they are not treated as victims, but arrested for prostitution. Black children account for 59 percent of prostitution-related arrests under 18 in this country. And the younger a girl is when she is arrested, the more likely she is to have been physically injured or sexually assaulted.
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The New York Times article shows that despite her success, body-image issues among female tennis players persist. The Root: Twitter Slams New York Times for Serena Williams "Body Image"Story.
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The New York Times on Saturday came under fire on Twitter for a tone-deaf article that essentially condemns the physique of tennis star Serena Williams.
The critique uses the lens of top female tennis players, who, ahem, refuse to look like Williams, who will be vying for the Wimbledon title against Garbiñe Muguruza on Saturday.
The article says that in spite of Williams' success (a win Saturday would give her 21 Grand Slam singles titles and her fourth in a row) body-image issues among female tennis players persist, forcing many players to avoid bulking up.
Williams'has large biceps and a mold-breaking muscular frame, which packs the power and athleticism that have dominated women's tennis for years. Her rivals could try to emulate her physique, but most of them choose not to,the report says.
Tomasz Wiktorowski, the coach of Agnieszka Radwanska, who is listed at 5 feet 8 and 123 pounds, says: "It's our decision to keep her as the smallest player in the top 10. Because, first of all she' a woman, and she wants to be a woman."
Really?
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
A literary conceit was used in Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano", in which The Counsel carries an ever-increasing bundle of letters from his ex-wife. As each missive is delivered to the village post office, he tells others in the village of the letters' contents, he waxes poetic describing her day to day itinerary of experiences. When asked when she will come to visit, his constant reply is, 'soon.' When his ex-wife does arrive unexpectedly, to reconcile their relationship, no less, it is revealed he has never opened any of the letters from her. Several years worth of letters unopened, yet each letter was enthusiastically awaited for.
"Hell," The Counsel would tell all within earshot, "Hell is my natural condition."
Pablo Neruda would walk the Promenade and watch from the window of his seaside villa as humanity strolled by on oppressively hot summer days and nights. His solitary observances evoked what some have described as a Hell, or at least a purgatory of human sin and degradation. It is all of that and more, but it is also a simple acknowledgement of the Beast that is in all of us. The Beast that conjures and transcends Angels. The Beast that is hidden until one finds himself as a...
Gentleman Alone
The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;
Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,
There is a continual life of pants and panties,
A hum from the fondling of silk stockings,
And women's breasts that glisten like eyes.
The salary man, after a while,
After the week's tedium, and the novels read in bed at night,
Has decisively fucked his neighbor,
And now takes her to the miserable movies,
Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes,
And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down
With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.
The night of the hunter and the night of the husband
Come together like bed sheets and bury me,
And the hours after lunch, when the students and priests are masturbating,
And the animals mount each other openly,
And the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz cholerically,
And cousins play strange games with cousins,
And doctors glower at the husband of the young patient,
And the early morning in which the professor, without a thought,
Pays his conjugal debt and eats breakfast,
And to top it all off, the adulterers, who love each other truly
On beds big and tall as ships:
So, eternally,
This twisted and breathing forest crushes me
With gigantic flowers like mouth and teeth
And black roots like fingernails and shoes
-- Pablo Neruda
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