Again with the damn Kumbaya

So this happened......

Family goes to Drive Thru somewhere in America. They take too long at the order window, and the guy in the next car yells out, "Hurry up you f*cken n*gger!" In response, the family being abused, pays for the abuser's meal.

I read that and had to take a breath. And then I had thoughts, many, many thoughts.

I saw a 60 Minutes episode on death row exonerations a few weeks ago. There was this one guy who had been held on DR for nigh on 40 years. He was on 60 minutes with my personal social justice warrior hero Bryan Stevenson who had fought (for years) for his client's release. Great story. The victim - the exoneree - was full of forgiveness for the criminals - the officers of the court - who had knowingly put an innocent man on death row.

The following week, as they always do on the show, they read letters to the show, and someone wrote how wonderful it is that this victim was so forgiving. The writer waxed on about how marvelous it was that the victim could forgive and carry on with his life and blah blah blah. 

I was not moved. I was not impressed. I won't be singing Kumbaya nor do I recommend others do so either.

I've had cause to ask this question before and I am asking it again today: in all this orgiastic forgiving that Black people are doing (remember the families of the Charleston Nine, just days after their loved ones were massacred?), is there an equal or greater orgy of changed behavior among perpetrators? Because if there is, I seem to be missing it. Before you answer, I invite you to consider the data: extra-judicial killings of POC by the agents of the state; the acts of violence incited by the candidate and perpetrated by his followers on the campaign trail; and the numbers of people of color parading thru court rooms everywhere in this nation even as I type, many of them charged with crimes trumped up by officers of the court. [If you don't believe me that charges are sometimes made up out of whole cloth, please read this stream of tweets]. 

We LOVE to celebrate these expressions of Black grace. but here's my question: when do Black folk get to be on the receiving end of that same grace? Give me a date please, I'll put it in my calendar. The very next day, y'all will hear a chorus of Kumbaya ringing out from my throat but not a second before.

What this is, is folk doing their do, acting all vile and taking the forgiveness and carrying the hell on as if ain't nothing have to change with their behavior because see, they forgave me! This take-the-forgiveness-and-remain-unchanged MO is not an individual problem, it is a societal problem. It explains why there are so many folk who if you just barely scratch their surface, the most fetid stench of supremacist thought pops out.

I am here to tell you that I am not here serve as salve to anybody's conscience. I am not here to pretend that my forgiveness means squat to you. You looking to me for A Balm in your own personal Gilead? It ain't me. 

Behave like a human being, treat me like a human being and we can talk. Until then, somebody else gon' have to sing that Kumbaya for you. I am otherwise occupied.In the interim, pay for your own damn meal.