Black forgiveness of dominant-caste sin has become a spiritual form of having to be twice as good, in trauma, as in other aspects of life, to be seen as half as worthy. “White people embrace narratives about forgiveness,” wrote the essayist and author Roxane Gay after the massacre, “so they can pretend the world is a fairer place than it actually is and that racism is merely a vestige of a painful past instead of this indelible part of our present.” The act of forgiveness seems a silent clause in a one-sided contract between the subordinate and the dominant. “Black people forgive because we
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