“But, I Forgive You?”

Abstract

On June 17, 2015, white supremacist Dylann Roof walked into Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Charleston, South Carolina, with a .45 caliber Glock handgun while members conducted their Wednesday night bible study. After sitting through the mid-week bible study, near the close of the meeting and after praying with them, Roof shot and killed nine people who became known as the Emanuel Nine. Black pain again was on full display in the media and so were calls for forgiveness. In this essay, we examine the rhetoric of forgiveness and how forgiveness, as a trope, performs in public when expressed through black pain. Further, we maintain that the wider public not only expects a rhetoric of forgiveness when racial ghosts of the past (and present) manifest in ways that cause black pain but also those grief-stricken black families must offer the forgiveness in non-threatening and expeditiously ways that ease public consciences. This leads us to examine the rhetoric of (un)forgiveness and how it functions through black pain as well.