What Shall the Blackgirl Do with Forgiveness?
Transgressors of Black girls include- white men, white women, Black men, Black women who uphold white supremacist, misogynoir, anti-Black, fatphobic, homophobic, transphobic, Christian supremacist thoughts, beliefs, and/or actions towards Black girls.
Thoughts/Beliefs include (non-exhaustive): Black girls are mean, angry, not intelligent, lack agency, attitudinal, inherently sexual, older than they are…
Actions include (non-exhaustive)- Physically and verbally reprimanding Black girls when they “talk back”, wear clothes that are not feminine and/or respectable, have sex before marriage, ignoring and blaming Black girls when she discloses a family member, friend, stranger, teacher and/or church leader has sexually abused her, excluding her from honors/advanced courses, ignoring and not believing a Black girl’s voice…
*Black girls are anybody 18 and under*
Dear White Men,
You are a sadistic fetishizer, sinisterly greedy colonizer, appropriator, and a monstrous friend of the devil [which makes sense how you’re familiar with the colonial tactics of kill, steal, and destroy]. You throw rocks and then hide your hand; You try to get everybody else to think they are delusional, when your hand has been and is at the center of it all. You claim rights to ideas, people, land, cultures, properties, and inventions that are not yours and center yourself as the ultimate deity to pacify your insecurities.
Your potential process to grace and absolution can be found in the P.S. of this letter.
Dear White Women,
I see you.
While the world paints you as pristine, palatable, pious, and pure, I see your marred, maniacal, malicious, myopic, mistrustful ways as you cunningly smile for the camera, holler women’s rights, teach in urban areas because you see Black girls and boys as damsels in distress/in need of fixing, declare it’s your Christian duty to take mission trips and/or plop into your favorite soup kitchen, homeless shelter, and/or adopt a Black child all to hide your racism and make you feel less guilty.
Sweetheart, I see you stand as the vanguard for white-male supremacy and anti-Blackness. It’s behind closed doors, behind voting booths, or in “harmless” ways as you clutch your purse when a Black man walks near for “safety” purposes. It’s when you sexualize and criminalize Black girls and women, deem her loud, obnoxious, and ill-mannered, feel threatened by her presence, and use Black girls and women’s culture and fashion for profit and entertainment. And only accept Black women and girls when they are the “model” citizen you deem appropriately palatable.
With the privilege of choosing your whiteness over your gender, any day, AND because you are the most protected, precious jewel of America, your guilt-filled, shame-filled tears, pestering whining, and savior-complex muzzles the cries and stories of Black girls’ realities that need to be heard.
Stop it.
Dear Black men,
Daddy. Paw Paw. Uncle. Cousin. Brother. Friend. Lover.
I love you, more than you’ll ever know. I wanted to give you the world. I wanted to make you happy, even at the cost of self. I wanted your attention, your approval, your love. But I soon learned, as momma did, my sisters did, and all my girl friends: we may not get much support from you, we may never be valuable enough to you, and we may never receive your love, but we still will/must love you. And because I love you and I believe love holds people accountable, I must hold you accountable.
And I see you. Don’t discount yourself from this conversation, saying “Oh no, I love Black women”, “I’m not like that” because you’ve done it, still do it, and will continue to do it because sexism/misogynoir lives in you. So find a way to healthily live with it and keep it in check every day because your mother, daughter, sister, niece, cousin, girlfriend, home girl, best friend’s life deserves it. So, listen up!
You know oppression. You know the pains of disenfranchisement and death at the hands of anti-Black systems and policies. You know what it’s like to never quite be good enough, always second best to any and all things white. Black girls know that pain too. She’s understudied, overlooked, undervalued yet expected to show up, not just for the world, but for you[ her father, brother, friend, lover]. Hell, she knows your plight and suffers it in silence. Not just because of anti-Black, white supremacy but misogynoir from both white and Black folks. It’s your subconscious and conscious hatred of her that oppresses her too. And, I know, your hatred is misplaced anger with white male supremacy; I watch it as it infests your mind and body, molding you to chase power, money, sex, accolades, and status to be seen as a “competent man” worth choosing. Not to mention, you cling to the clitoris of white women as your “success trophy”. But, there’s always a moment where you lack, where you realize, while you’re trying to uphold patriarchy, it’s causing your deterioration, demeaning you. Then, you realize you’ll never mount to the measuring stick designed by whiteness. And, then, we [Black girls and Black women] become the site you take hold of to control, to feel powerful. We become the bearers of your pain, insecurities, frustration, agony. And, yet, we, hold your hell and ours too, all the while still trying to protest, build, and cape for you, because we see you. We know your pain. Yet, still, you save the best for the white man and woman and give us scraps, letting us know how valuable we are to you.
Which is why in public, I wonder how you dare scream “Queen” and “We love our Black women and girls” in public, while privately you demand submission, you molest, rape, beat, ignore, kill, spew double standards, and/or only protect Black girls when she is your daughter, sister, niece, cousin, granddaughter [and sometimes you don’t even do that].
While you all may have many fooled, I know you use Black girls and women for your patriarchal agenda and fragile masculinity. You need her to politically, socially, economically, advance you in the white world and to be dominant in the Black world. So you groom Black girls to sustain your churches, businesses, and homes, to be your trophy as you dick swing with the guys, and be smart and loud just enough to make you look good but never to challenge your fragile ego.
You scream “Queen”. You say, “I love Black girls and women”. Now, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is, in public and in private. Because to be quite frank who would the Black man be without the Black girl and Black woman?
Dear Black women,
Sista. Girl. Friend. Mother. Daughter. Granny. Cousin. Auntie. Lover.
You remember and know the frustration of momma/grandma/sister/auntie/cousin pulling your hair so you could look “presentable” in public and/or being made fun of at home or school because of your hair. You know the ills of colorism. You remember the lectures and policing of “correct speech” to both authoritative figures and men alike that you’ve mastered code-switching. You remember the demanding lessons of finding the “appropriate” outfit for your body shape while also thinking about warding off predators [because of course you’re the problem and not the offender]. You remember how God was presented as man and you wondered where you fit into the divine cosmos? Or, maybe you didn’t question the nature of God and accepted the role of submissive, sufferer, sexual, scorned while carrying the burdens of sustaining, saving, and providing salvation for Black churches, only to be denied pulpit access. Maybe your lessons included freedom and liberation in your body and person yet got labeled “loose”, “fast”, “hoe”, “slut”. You know the agony of wanting to ask why or disagree or shout your opinion from the rooftops, but maybe some days deciding not to, to survive and avoid consequences. Or maybe you made your voice and presence known and was labeled a “bitch” or “arrogant”. You know the pain of holding it all in. You know the turmoil of having to make ends meet with not much money, food, or support. You know you build, maintain, and save worlds with little compensation. You know the feelings of never being good enough, abandoned, yearning to be seen, to belong, to be valued, to be loved. My question is why do you put your daughter, niece, cousin, sister through this same agonizing pain? She needs you to be there with her, building her up, protecting her, developing her inner power, fighting with and for her, being a part of her liberation work even when no one else will. This sacred sistahood is our hush harbor and haven; therefore, we cannot afford to be gatekeepers that sustain and perpetuate the very systems that prevent you, us, and her from accessing opportunity, resources, and spaces that promote our healthy identity and learning development. OUR Sistahood is our salvation! The little Black girl in you deserves it and our lives depend on it.
With all of you now at attention, I call you forth to read this letter with open hearts and minds.
_________________________________________________________________
I can still see and hear the wails and screams of this Black girl dragged by her white teacher into the hallway of her school while I was tutoring. The little Black girl had to be no more than 8 years old as this was the second-grade hallway. My student and I watched in utter disbelief. She kept screaming, “No, No, No” and her teacher just kept dragging her out of the classroom into the hallway. What I saw was an innocent child communicating discomfort, pain, hurt. She needed something and was trying to communicate, and her teacher was not listening. Her teacher had clearly gazed at her as deviant and criminal because after dragging her into the hallway and demanding she go to the counselor’s office, her teacher came and said to me, “Are you okay?” “Were you scared?” A woman twice this child’s size, afraid of this little Black girl’s body, who had no control or say over how her body was being manipulated to be dragged against her will. And, yet, she had mustered the gaul to ask me, a young Black woman, was I afraid; Afraid of what you might ask? I am not sure! For when I peered at her, I saw a beautiful, smart little girl who has dreams, aspirations, who is someone’s daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend, my little sister in the Black community, my future child, and the little Black girl in me. I still mourn and grieve the violence ensued on this innocent Black girl. I can only imagine how those memories sit with her today and how she has probably experienced many more forms of violence because of systemic racism and sexism. Is this Black girl to forgive her teacher and chalk it up to a miscommunication and poor teacher education prep? How has her teacher indefinitely scarred her and impacted the trajectory of her development? What do we do with offenses that are continuously repeated just by different people and systems? What can this Black girl and other Black girls do with forgiveness?
The offering of forgiveness by Black people in America, concerning racialized and gendered interpersonal and systemic/institutional crimes [rooted in white supremacy and misogynoir] is beyond spiritual, the implications of forgiveness yield social and political effects. It leaves a dialogical space to romanticize tragedy, pain, grief and dress it up as heroic, resilient acts of grace and mercy, to ultimately deem it the “Christian” thing to do. All the while, this forgiveness by Black person(s) reinforces whiteness as dominant and unintentionally pardons white supremacy, while simultaneously ridiculing any basis for civil disobedience and/or violent upheaval. In essence, forgiveness releases the offender/violator from their actions, implies a new slate, absolves the offense, and returns relationships to the status quo. Consequently, the status quo for the Black person is unjust and inequitable, especially for Black girls who come to know all too well the cyclical nature of ostracization and violence because of her race and gender.
Black girl, Ma’Khyia Bryant murdered by Officer Nichola Reardon.
This is a short and non-exhaustive list to show the cyclical violence Black girls face and to show the way media, academic institutions, and local communities render Black girls dispensable and invisible, thus failing to uplift their stories to the public and/or academically engage in research that examines interpersonal violence (home, church, community) and systemic violence (schools, prison) impacting Black girls. What is empirically known is that youth development scholarship has shown healthy youth development requires positive relationships between the individual and their environment/ecology; yet, Black girls across her socio-ecological terrain are bound to encounter repeated negative experiences within her environment(s), due to social, political, and educational structures rooted in white supremacy and misogynoir. Unfortunately, Black girls are forced to rip off the jaded lens of childhood and adolescence to face the harsh realities of navigating Black girlhood in America. Whether it’s adultification, criminalization, hypersexualization, bodily violations, and/or beautification, Black girls are manipulated, ridiculed, violated, ignored, misunderstood, and more. It is important to note that while Black girls face these heinous offenses at such young ages, this does not overlook her bodily and vocal agency and intelligence. Not to mention, she is resourceful and knows how to create communities and locations of joys and comforts; These are her weapons of survival and resistance from the repeated offenses of social, political, and even religious maltreatment. Nevertheless, she must grow to know and coexist with repetitive behaviors of exclusionary practices and multiple forms of violence in her home, communities, schools, and churches. What then shall the Black girl do with forgiveness?
Forgiveness is no easy feat; It requires contextualization. It is complex with no clear structure/systematic way of how to apply it and when/if one should apply it. It is ambiguous, leaving the beholder of forgiveness the option to forgive or not to forgive. As Rev. Risher notes,”I have never seen a Scripture passage that lays out how much time it takes — or how much time God allows us — to forgive”. Socially and politically, forgiveness is not immediately provided, rather an offender receives punishment in the form of hefty fines and/or a one-way ticket to jail/prison, especially if you are a Black or Brown person. Theologically, many argue forgiveness is a mandate by God. Particularly in the Christian faith, scriptures/sayings like : “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you”(Matthew 6:14 NLT), forgive 70 times 7, turn the other cheek are preached as necessary behaviors to be “Christ-like”. Christians are to turn the other cheek and absolve their neighbor from their offenses, which offenses for Black girls could range from being bullied because of her hair, skin color, weight in school, to being tossed and dragged out of her classroom desk by a school officer, to being popped in her mouth by her mom or other “adult” reprimanding her for speaking out and being “too grown”, to her church leader raping her, to watching a Back woman, Breonna Taylor, receive no justice for being shot while sleep and wrestling with, “Is this my future?” When we apply these forms of forgiveness to racialized and gendered bodies, social and political forms of forgiveness imply grace, mercy, and justice are void and inaccessible, especially for darker, gendered bodies. And, theologically, the homiletical disposition of forgiveness denies the possibility of justice and lets the perpetrator roam free. How then is the Black girl to navigate a legalistic, ageist, white-male Christian supremacist, anti-black society, if she’s already been characterized as sexually deviant, obnoxious, and/or criminal? How then is she to have faith and invoke the authoritative power of the Lord’s prayer when, as Roxane Gay says, “we forgive and forgive and forgive and those who trespass against us continue to trespass against us”? What then shall the Black girl do with forgiveness ?
Historically, particularly in the construction of the United States of America, religious and political leaders have used theological concepts and sacred text (i.e. The Curse of Ham) to identify blackness with sin, disorder, and immorality and whiteness as pure, virtuous, and “Godly”. Supposedly justified by God and enacted by man’s “obedience to God”, the theological, social, and political characterization of blackness as inferior to whiteness sets a morally ground basis for slavery, Black codes/Jim Crow Laws, and our current penal system. Throughout these reformation periods of penal structures, it is common to explore systemic violence against the Black community and/or Black men. Rarely do we historically and/or contemporarily track the heinous patterns of violence towards Black women and Black girls. Enslaved Black girls could be seen at the tender age of three picking cotton. Defenseless, Black girls lacked protection and could be physically and sexually abused by their masters anytime with impunity. The North is not exempt from violent crimes towards Black girls as their economic structure was heavily reliant on Black girl’s extraneous labor, keeping Black girls as indentured servants up to 28 years old. And, unfortunately, Black girls knew and know death. Historical evidence, as early as the 18th century, exposes the death of Hanna Occuish, a Black girl, to be the youngest child ever [on record] to be lynched in the United States in the state of Connecticut; These executions picked up across the North and North East within the 19th century. Neither the North or the South are exempt from racialized and gendered violence, yet slavery set the theological, social, and political structures of violence and socio-economic exploitation, stripping Black girls of their childhood innocence. These permitted structures carried well into the 20th and 21st century because the stories of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of the four Black girls [Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Carol Denise McNair], Ruby Bridges, Claudette Colvin, still ring loud. And, yet, the list goes on of countless Black girls’ names and stories we may never get to know who have seen/known violence and oppression in the face of simply being a Black girl and living. What shall the Black girl do with forgiveness?
What shall the Black girl do with forgiveness knowing the offenses shall repeat, knowing her perpetrator is remorseless, and knowing not only will her offender not ask for forgiveness but expect her to forgive their offenses and be the “bigger person”? What shall the Black girl do with forgiveness, knowing the historical transgressions of white supremacy and misogynoir, unapologetically permeate her corporeal reality then, today, and will carry over into her tomorrow? What shall the Black girl do with forgiveness when white supremacy and misogynoir take root in her mother, father, guardian, place of worship, school, and community? And though you, her transgressor, have yet to ask for forgiveness, the Black girl shall not forgive for there is nothing beneficial to her political, social, theological, and/or economic survival in forgiving. She will not release you from the reality of sitting with your sins. She doesn’t have the currency to shell out forgiveness. Truthfully, her merciful act has been centuries of not burning this country to the ground and steadily offering love and care, and intellectual and cultural knowledge, friendship and fellowship, growing up to sustain homes, churches, businesses, and countries, engaging in civil disobedience, becoming productive citizens, and much more. What shall the Black girl do with forgiveness? Nothing. What can the Black girl do with forgiveness? Nothing. What will the Black girl do with forgiveness? Whatever she so pleases.
P.S. In the event you ever seek forgiveness, I implore you to look to the God, unscathed by constructions of white supremacy, anti-Black, misogynoir, Christian supremacy, fatphobic, homo and trans phobic ideologies, who happens to be the keeper, sustainer, lover, of all Black girls, for absolution. You might find forgiveness and mercy there.
