Reverend Brenda Tapia

The morning after the first riots on dark highways of Charlotte, N.C., protesting the shooting and killing of a black man, Keith Scott, by a CMPD police officer, Reverend Brenda Tapia was sipping a cup of tea at a sidewalk café on Main Street of the quaint college town Davidson, NC, 20 miles north from Charlotte, NC.   I spotted Reverend Tapia like a garden of Black Eyed Susans, bright and resilient in a patch of Piedmont red clay; she was wearing an earthy yellow and brown African shirt that soaked up beautifully her dark skin and contrasted perfectly with the red bricks that lined the streets and houses of pedestrian-friendly down town. 

We were groggy from the news of the night before. Quickly, she informed me that a perturbed friend had called her to ask, “What are you going to do about kids and the riots?” She shrugged her shoulders, leaned forwards and said, “I have been working on that problem my whole life”.

Shortly after that, as if on cue for a celebrity watch, four separate Davidson college functionaries stopped by our table, greeting Reverend Tapia, and chatting briefly. Although in retirement from her Davidson duties for ten years now, Reverend Tapia remains a legend.

Reverend Tapia is a Davidson native. Apart from going to Howard University for a degree in psychology, then working as a counselor in Washington, DC, later attending Johnson C. Smith Seminary and working as a pastoral counselor in Atlanta, GA, and before being ordained in the Presbytery of Charlotte in Charlotte, NC, she has called Davidson home most of her life.

She grew up in a large extended family in strictly segregated Davidson. Today, college life and culture spills into the downtown – outsiders have brought in tolerance to diversity that Reverend Tapia initially worked very hard to weave in from within just 20 – 30 years ago. Back then, a “plantation mentality” still hung over the town and college;  “Yes, Missah” she added quirkily to make sure I understood her point. Her great grandmother was born a slave and remained on until she was eight years old in Davidson.

While she grew up in a protective extended family, where as the first grandchild she was “spoiled rotten” with love, her first vivid memories of town life in Davidson are of racism, some of it including Ku Klux Klan violence. She didn’t even know what was going on and her family tried to shield her from the truth, but one of her first memories was getting the newspaper from the newspaper receptacle one morning as a five year-old in the 1950s, and seeing a burning cross planted in their front yard, highly visible facing the main road that lead in and out of Davidson.

The week leading to this event, her uncle was a local host of an international church meeting. He was the only local person in the entire group – as a result, he was also the only black participant. This “odd” situation confused the white folks in a town where everyone knew everyone – why was this black Davidson man being treated like a student and not acting like a servant, as he was supposed to, amongst all these white foreigners? On the last day, one of the participants needed medical attention, so Reverend Tapia’s uncle lead the injured person and some others to a medical office. While in the waiting room, he sat in the colored section. A young Swedish lady thought this was ridiculous, so she playfully (and naively) left her “whites only section” and went to sit on his lap …. and even licked his ice cream.

It didn’t take long for the whole town of Davidson to find out about this “egregious” act. Later that night, at the good-bye party of the event, a bullet whizzed by Reverend Tapia’s uncle’s head. Not long after, his brothers quickly and secretly took him into hiding. The next morning, the burning crosses were put in the front yard of Reverend Tapia’s house, the Dean’s office and the football field of the college. When I asked if she thought the European church event participants knew of the repercussions to the black man and his family for a young white lady sitting on his lap, Reverend Tapia said, “Of course they never learned what happened; they flew back to Europe the next day”. They had no idea what raw and primitive associations the white townspeople made with the playful gesture and how violently they would react.

But, for Reverend Tapia, that was when her journey started.

That is also why she asks, one to two generations later, “Do the Charlotte rioters of today really know who they are and Whose they are?” Reverend Tapia has suffered oppression, segregation and racism since the day of her birth. She also has a very strong family, and faith in God. Her Afro-centric Christianity tells her that God is everywhere. She hopes the rioting youth understand that, or at least find strength and guidance from either God or family but preferably both.

That is why she started the Love of Learning Program at Davidson College.

In the late 1980s, while she was Assistant Chaplain at the College, she was asked by a Committee to help increase enrollment of black American students up to 100 (up from typically two), and increase the number black faculty from five to ten. The ultimate goal was to “create” black PhDs, who would want to come back and teach to make sure that each student would have had at least one black professor while getting a degree at Davidson.

When the committee approached her to ask if, with that in mind, she could develop a two-week enrichment course for black students, she merely laughed. After she recognized that her sporadic and genuine laugh was a faux-pas in white Corporate America, she couldn’t help but add in her typical semi-humoristic way, “Let me first ask my Boss”, and when her literal boss, who was sitting beside her, gave her a weird look, she pointed her eyes to Heaven. The committee understood she would work on this, but needed to think first how to do this best.

Starting in 1987, she developed Love of Learning, not a two-week crash course, but a five-year intensive four-week summer program, which offered academic enrichment for local black high school students. Based on her personal experience with her parents, as well as with her work as a counselor in Atlanta, she decided the program would have to involve the parents; therefore the students would come back every other Saturday from September to May with their parents. She worked on self-love, and self-awareness. She wanted the students to really understand who they were. She wanted them to learn to love themselves as much as God loves them. She also explained the practical, social and cultural realities of racism to them.

Black Pride was also a component of Love of Learning. She decided to bring to her group of students what she thought had been lost with de-segregation of schools: an academically stimulated and caring all-black community. She explained that when her all-black high school closed and she went to academically challenging classes in majority white schools in the 1960s, she witnessed how her former black teachers and principals were demoded to petty jobs, and also that her white teachers did not bother to critique or even correct her work – instead it merely received a quick grade. She felt the humiliation for herself, her family and her former teachers and principals. She also felt lost, for while her parents set high standards for their children, they were not sure how best to relay it – by default they neglected the components of love and pride.

Love of Learning would offer her flock of students stringent critique, but also tough love, and black pride, as well as sense of black community with an intellectual and moral elite they could look up, so that they could tackle and excel later on in academia  – be it black or white. Her program was a success; her alumni cherish her professionally as much as personally.

As one of her first students, Thea Rhinehard, explains, “the most important feature of Love of Learning was an environment where we encouraged to embrace our blackness as a positive. Remember, the world tells black children that they must minimize their blackness, keep it quiet, and gain respect by assimilating into the larger, white culture.

“Brenda tried to teach us that blackness wasn't shameful, wasn't a liability, wasn't something to swallow to make white people be nice to us. She taught us that we could be proud of our history, our heritage, ourselves. We learned about black luminaries, social structures and all sorts of things that aren't taught in schools. History books are written by the victors, not by marginalized people; some black churches try to fill that gap, but Brenda went all out to help us see a richer, more complete view of ourselves and a more fleshed out understanding of our country.” 

Reverend Tapia developed hatred for white people when she had to be transferred to a majority white public school in North Charlotte – there she felt ignored by white teachers. Then, she developed hatred for black people while attending Howard University by experiencing racism by some other blacks against her own very dark skin – she even made me note that she was so black, her lips and palms were black; in some black cultures being very black is asset but in others, it is a liability. As she grew, she realized that a part of racism comes from a lack of spirituality, which to her is basic love. If we find love, first in ourselves, we can heal individually and then as a group when we can learn to come sit at the Table together – in the Biblical but also worldly, real and practical sense: not just Jesus’ Table, but also the corporate board room table, the surgical, classroom or dinner table.

Reverend Tapia has also had very practical (and somewhat absurd) racial instances to deal with. She learned from those experiences, and repeats that we can turn “stumbling blocks into stepping stones”. With the 2016 Davidson College Homecoming Queen and King being black and sporting “Black Lives Matter” sashes at the Half Time of the football game, we can trace the stepping stones leading to the success of many black students in and from Davidson, directly back to Reverend Tapia.

Reverend Tapia never boasted the quantitative success of her Love of Learning program, instead, Thea Rhinehard states, “Brenda can count many PhDs, attorneys, community leaders, political operatives, etc. amongst Love of Learning graduates. But the degree count isn't what's most important to me.”

After sitting with Reverend Tapia for almost three hours, her approach, accomplishments and status become alive and impressive. While the topics covered come from sad and deep places, it is her special light and twinkle that you carry away most from her; she is the kind of person you want to steal horses with.

Is Black Beautiful?

Ugly Duckling

“What was that?” Thea’s mother inquired after she finished her speech at the 1989 General Baptist State Convention Oratorical Contest – a contest that gives young Christians the opportunity to develop and demonstrate their intellectual thinking and oral presentation skills following Christian themes. Thea herself didn’t know what had come out of her mouth. She thought she was well prepared for this State competition: she was simply going to repeat the same speech she had been using at all the previous Oratorical Contests – the same one as at the Contest at her First Baptist Church in West Charlotte, where it all began, through the two other contests she won and that led her here to the State competition. But here, in this 10,000-seat arena, she completely blacked out and her mind went blank. She could not remember her speech. After regaining herself somewhat, as if in a trance, she completely improvised a speech.

And her speech rocked. It had a flow and it was infused with countless Bible Quotes that made the Christian audience nod in approval. The judges were mesmerized by this petite girl, who had powerful lungs, a strong voice, a fearless mind, and an unwavering Biblical message! Although her body did not carry the weight to offer a sermon-like intonation of the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., and although the selection of certain words and her pronunciation made her “sound white”, she won the State competition and a $2,500 scholarship for a black college!

Her knees were shaking from the size of the venue, the thin air that her oratorical speech seemed to have come from, and the delirium of victory - especially since she didn’t believe much of the Bible quotes she was using. But she was not surprised that she won - she loved this competition! She loved having a microphone, she loved challenging thoughts, she loved carrying them over to others. As of a young age, this activity of public speaking empowered her. It took her intellect to places she loved to be.

She was an ambitious teenager. With this title under her belt, she knew she would love to be a TV reporter. But there was one problem: she was ugly. She had a big nose, her skin was too dark and, worst of all, her hair was too nappy. She would never be a TV reporter.

Thea at 18 with Wave Nuveau Perm

Since she could remember, she envied her lighter skinned cousins, the slender noses of her aunts, and especially the curly hair of her own mother. Every morning her mother reminded her that she had “bad hair” after combing – or trying to comb - through it to try to make it look “respectable”, of which the result was usually just a bunch of ripped out hair. Her mother would typically resort to decorating her hair with a dozen plaits, so Thea would at least be identified as a girl. She had the worst type of nappy hair.

The whole family, the entire black community was under pressure to abide by white Western norms of beauty and worked hard every day to make themselves look “respectable”. The black community had to overcome all the stigmas related to once being primitive slaves, they had to overcome any stigmas of – God forbid!- indecencies related to the civil rights movement, they had to overcome all current stigmas of being the lower class smooching off the government or landing in jail. They needed and wanted to show the world their decency. Appearance mattered. Nice clothes, clean smells, and made-up hair mattered. Thea felt the pressure especially hard, because she got the short stick when it came to hair that could be made respectable and play her part in showing the world how decent the black community was.

Her hair curls up into tiny little coils.  In addition, she has lots of hair and the strands are fine. So while others who have thick nappy hair can straighten it with hot irons or chemicals, doing any of those treatments leads her fine hair to fall out and/or her scalp to burn.

Her mother has lighter skin and curly hair, curly hair that is very workable. Her mother’s family descends from slaves and white slave owners. Rape of black female slaves by white male slave owners was common to procreate more slaves at no extra cost– a person born from a female slave and a white slave owner was still just the slave of that white slave owner. Thea’s family in Lincolnton County, North Carolina, is a result of that practice and it can be seen in hair and skin tone.  

Her mother took her to the hair salon at age six for the first time and then regularly for special occasions, such as Christmas and Easter. Thea endured hour-long sessions where they worked on a concoction of straightening out her hair with a hot comb and slobbering pomade on it to avoid it getting nappy again. After those torturous beauty salon treatments, as a young and conscientious six year-old, she would take a shower cap with her everywhere to keep any potential rain from destroying the effort. Also, she was tired of being labeled “tender headed” by her mother and hairdressers, because she whimpered from the pain of all the work on her kinky, bountiful and fine hair –so she did anything to avoid treatments.

Thea at 4 with plaits

Thea knew from an early age on that she had a healthy intellect. She excelled at school, she sought academic competitions, she challenged the church preachings whenever she felt like it. All those empowering and liberating activities, however, were dampened by the constant reminder that she was black, that she looked black and that she could not hide it, especially with her “unrespectable” hair that was so hard “to tame”.

As a teenager, and aware that she was a gifted student, Thea fought to find herself the best education the system could offer. While navigating a complex system all alone as a teenager was a monumental task, maintaining respectable hair was considered the norm, although that actually took a much more monumental effort than navigation schooling options!

Thea at 11 with hot-combed hair

It was considered acceptable by 12 to use heavy duty chemicals on your hair. Starting age twelve, every six weeks, Thea went to a hair salon to have chemical relaxers applied to her hair to take the nappiness out. The chemicals used are as strong as the drain cleaner, Drano, and resulted in bald spots on her scalp that she covered by herself at home with pomades.  In her teens, she also tried fashionable perms – at that time there was the Jheril Curl, which was greasy. That style also broke her hair off.

Thea at 13 with Jheril Curl Perm

From the grooming perspective, during her teens, Thea was caught in an ongoing battle of alternating relaxing her hair with chemicals and getting a greasy perm, which both lead to breaking hair. After each new style, she would have to let her hair grow out “virgin”, which gave her a head of hair with two textures. She would camouflage her virgin hair by having a stylist hot-comb the growing-in hair. Ideally, she would have just cut her hair short, but that would just make her “unrespectable” and possibly a laughing stock…

In college, with no money, a high respectability-curb with academic peers, and declining desire for chemicals and hours of treatment, she decided to buy wigs. She cut her hair short and bought wigs on mail order. It worked well and was easy, so she kept the wig solution as she started her professional life.

Thea at 21 wearing a wig

One day, after she had established herself as a serious professional and had good relationships with her colleagues, she decided to go work without a wig on and just let her hair be natural. It still meant she had to put in a serious amount of hair preparation: twisting and untwisting her hair, and applying products.  It was a big risk, but she felt confident enough to take it. She walked into her office and immediately, a colleague commented that she looked like a “pick a ninny” – an insulting term for “little black child”. She felt humiliated and immediately reverted to wearing wigs.

In her late twenties, she tired of wigs and she went one last time to straighten her hair into a bob. She also briefly tried a bun. Then, after the straightened and bobbed hair broke off, she went for a totally new look and tried microbraids, made from braided natural hair, which took hours to put in, cost a fortune, and if put in tightly to look neat, hurt at the scalp and needed regular tightening to maintain a fresh look. Microbraids, hot combs, chemicals, pomades, burned earlobes, scalps, painful hair roots….. by thirty, she was tired of all this - she made a brave leap to step out into the world with her natural hair.

Thea at 27 with relaxed hair

She was scared! Would people take her seriously? Would she be called names again?  Would they treat her like a thief anytime she entered a store? Could she walk around in jeans and a hoodie with such hair without being stopped by the police? This may seem absurd, but it was a big and real risk for an African American woman. She decided to do it anyways… with the price of working on her hair manually every time before she walked out her door, twisting the small coils until her fingers and arms hurt. 

Thea at 31 with twists

The natural look worked for her and her immediate community seemed alright with it; and best of all, she was somewhat liberated from hair treatment servitude … but then her thin kinky natural twisted hair kept matting….

So, the logical succession was dreadlocks, which worked stupendously with her hair! But soon her dreadlocked hair took over her petite frame – she felt like she was sporting a mane. And then the dreadlocked hair started breaking off….

Thea at 36 with dreadlocks

She resigned to the fact that her hair was a lose-lose situation for her.

Not only that, in the South, no matter how hard she, her family and her black community worked on sounding, acting and looking respectable, they were still “just black”. In her thirties, even as an emancipated and educated professional woman, she experienced not just once being harassed by police officers for no offense whatsoever, for just being a black female. No matter how smart, how professional and how eloquent she was, not matter how many hours she worked on making her hair look less black, being black was still her primary identity. At work, in stores, on the street…

On a whim, in her forties, she left the South and moved to NYC.

She met a man, in fact a white man, who liked her hair – natural, short, slightly greying. He liked her feminine and fun clothes and did not make her feel like she had to constantly prove she was not an angry black nor the clichéd over-sexual African woman white people love to label black women as, but simply a smart, educated and curious woman, who wanted to work, think, debate, play and wear nice clothes like everyone else. She was not the black fetish of a white man. He just liked her -the whole package with her own set of stubborn priorities.

Other steps miraculously fell into place.

She found a hairdresser who convinced her to cut her hair short and keep it short. The hairdresser wasted no time telling her, her natural short and slightly greying hair was just fine and complemented her body perfectly. The hairdresser  - who is white - has perfected a cutting technique that takes 40 minutes every month. And it requires no twisting!

When Nethea went to the dentist for a check up, he asked her to do a TV ad for his office with her “big horse teeth”. At first, she thought this was just another tasteless joke that she was ugly. It was not – her big teeth were healthy, a great asset, and a lucrative advertising tool for him.

When she was downsized from her investment job, on a whim she submitted camera pictures of herself for a TV show that was looking for forty year-old women with a healthy natural look and wellness concerns. No one was more natural than her – although her hair had endured endless trials with products, her skin had not: she grew up in a world where makeup was designed and created for white skin. She had black skin, so she had no “makeup look.” They liked her look, her natural ease with the camera, the intelligence of her appearance, and she was hired for a daily TV show viewed by millions of Americans.

Thea at 44 on stage

Now, the “ugly duckling” does TV advertisements for dentists and TV shows for skin care products, and feels all right and very feminine… with natural tight coily and short hair.

Reflecting on how her looks have lead her on a 180 degree shift in course, she thinks the trigger was her former boyfriend’s authentic reaction of being perplexed that a black woman would think being black is ugly. He was the first person she met who had not bought into the social norm that Eurocentric of Anglicized beauty was superior to black beauty. He did not see her blackness as a fetish, a novelty or a liability. This played a role in liberating her from some racial pressures and taught her to embrace what she has. This is absolutely new territory to her – with less internalized racism, she feels less racial self loathing and doesn’t feel ugly. She has been able to put aside the reflex of having to put white people at ease in front of her black skin and kinky hair.  She is simply a middle aged professional woman ready to tackle the world.

For the first time ever, taking care of her looks is not a battle to be respectable and conforming, but an activity that brings joy, includes a healthy dose of well-deserved vanity and even a career in TV and journalism. If only that teenager who won the Oratorical Competition 25 years ago would have known.

Thea at 39 after cutting off dreadlocks

The “ugly duckling” still does have a hard time believing compliments that she is in fact beautiful. Black and beautiful is still a new concept to many, even the black and beautiful themselves. Even the black, beautiful and brilliant. She still balks when white Manhattan doormen open the door for her, a black woman. But hopefully her new swan-like wingspan will help her fly away from that conflict.

My middle-aged middle-class parent-self is a big part of the traffic problem

Forged Turbo Forgiveness

Forged Turbo Forgiveness

I never forgave her and in a pleasurably sadistic way, I never want to. I want to remember and relive how she used and hurt our friendship.  I never want to forgive her, but I decided to forget her, to eliminate her face and name from my memory.

My feelings for non-forgiveness are very un-American. In America, common public displays of instant forgiveness are not uncommon, especially in the religious South, also known as the Bible Belt.

tag plate in NC

In the summer of 2015, after a family was victim of a car crash, which killed the toddler son and the baby born via emergency surgery after the wreck, the father urged forgiveness for the driver of the truck responsible for the tragedy a few days after it had occurred. The news received front page of the local Charlotte, North Carolina, paper.

After the tragic shooting in the old and historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist killed nine parishioners during their Wednesday Bible Study, some families of the victims announced publicly barely a day later that they forgave the killer.

In both cases, those offering forgiveness were acting on their Christian belief. In the case of the family in the car wreck, the article in the local Charlotte paper quotes the father, “We have, in our hearts, forgiven the man who did this. It was not the easiest thing to do, but in some ways it was because we knew (…) that Jesus Christ has forgiven us our debt”.

Similarly, in the case of the killing of nine black parishioners by a white supremacist, a statement of forgiveness by one of the victim’s daughters, was offered to the killer, “I will never talk to her ever again, I will never be able to hold her ever again. But I forgive you.”

Emanuel AME Church Charleston, S.C.

It is about taking the moral high ground.  In the case of the black community, it is also important for the parishioners not to fall to the level of “the angry white man” who murdered nine Christians, but rather, more than ever, remain fervent in their belief in Jesus Christ, the Grace of God, the guidance it offers, and being virtuous.

As a friend of mine further explained, “It is about being a TRUE Christian. If Christ can forgive his persecutors, we should forgive ours. It is not easy to be like Christ, but if that is what you strive to be, you must be able to forgive. You must try with Jesus’ help, because we are not strong enough to do it on our own. The parishioners of Charleston who forgive the white killer are not Saints because they chose to forgive; they are “a work in progress”. They are trying so hard to be like Jesus Christ.”

Even a Washington Post writer, Michael Gerson, wrote on June 22, 2015 about the reaction of the parishioners in Charleston, “Forgiveness (…) demonstrates spiritual maturity, strength of character, depth, discipline, and steadiness”

Amazed at this unwavering and generous public offering of forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ even for the most heinous acts, I asked some non-religious American friends about this. The reaction was unanimously in favor of forgiveness. While the aspect of doing it for the higher moral ground was not in the name of the Grace of God, it was for my non-religious friends, turned to a feeling of relief, a loss of burden and a freedom from pain for oneself.

Indeed, psychology promotes seeking forgiveness. Studies seem to indicate that people more likely to forgive are healthier both physically and in relationships. Psychology offers forgiveness models. Forgiveness should be sought after and it can be taught.

The problem is the instant public turbo forgiveness. One friend highlighted that Americans, who offer forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ, are encouraged to do so immediately. Even Michael Gerson, in the Washington Post article mentioned above, explained that forgiveness related to murder was more valuable if it was offered before the killer had even finished his job. An African American friend further hinted that turbo forgiveness is practiced mainly by Southern Baptists and especially by African Americans, who may have simply conditioned themselves to do so to gloss over the absurdity of their situation,  since slavery and throughout the continuing systemic oppression...

Prayer at South Carolina Low Country restaurant

As my friend had experienced personally in both a Christian and then later therapeutic settings, instant forgiveness cannot be genuine, it cannot heal; it is a knee jerk reaction to what the Southern Baptist church tells you to do. True forgiveness requires time and understanding and probably help from outside for traumatic experiences. Instant public forgiveness in the name of Jesus maybe jumpstarts the process (and that probably only for fervent Christians), but, if at all, the announcement of forgiveness can only be the beginning of the real healing process.

In my survey amongst my non-religious friends, forgiveness is about healing; it is about accepting; it is about choosing to free oneself from burden and moving on to being a better stronger person. My American friends of Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian faith agree that seeking forgiveness is a process that requires an open state of mind, and that it always should be sought after. And most religions see it similarly.

Based on a cheap Wikipedia search, most religions offer guidance in forgiveness. As we know, forgiveness is a non-option for Christians. Hindus are supposed to seek, as well as offer forgiveness to people and society in specific acts, as well as more general acts in order to achieve a purer state. Buddhism declares, “Forgiveness is Supreme Peace”, and declares “feminine forgiveness” -which does not require repenting- as the higher level than “male forgiveness” – which does require repenting.

Other religions are, however, more practical about it. In Islam, forgiveness is required between believers, but not from a believer to a non-believer. In Judaism, forgiveness is not so much about reaching a higher moral ground, but rather offers practical guidance between humans: forgiveness is not offered, it is sought after by offering repentance by the perpetrator to the victim; the victim can hear the wish to repent, but he/she does not need to forgive. Also, humans do not seek forgiveness from God for problems between humans. In conversations, a mormon and a Christian Orthodox smirked over Catholics weekly opportunity to seek forgiveness straight from God!

My cheap Wikipedia search makes me relate to the Jewish approach to forgiveness.  To me, forgiveness is a two way street, between two parties, one repenting and one forgiving, I guess also it would be more complete in my simple way of seeing balance in the universe, a sort of yin and yang?

But yet another American friend quickly reiterates:  “Forgiveness is something that you do for yourself, not for another person. They don’t even have to know anything about it. When you are able to forgive someone, (…) you can move forward. It is easier if the perpetrator has apologized and or made reparations, but even if you get neither of those, you can and should still forgive.”

A business coach even offers a Prayer of Forgiveness, which in essence is a path to freedom from any suffering, totally separate from the cause of suffering or anything or anyone inflicting it.

To my American friends, forgiveness clearly becomes an individual choice on taking the higher road to find acceptance and personal peace, or for my Christian friends, being virtuous.

But forgiveness can be misused. As a friend explained, when growing up, she was pressured into immediately forgiving an elder Southern Baptist church member for his wrong doing towards her. The elders tried to make her feel guilty that by not forgiving she was not being virtuous; yet she was actually feeling guilty for pretending to be more virtuous and more Christ-like by offering false forgiveness. She ended up having to publicly forgive. Years later, as an adult, she realized something was wrong and sought professional help to find true forgiveness or rather acceptance from what had happened. She ended up distancing herself from the church and people who preached forgiveness on her, because she realized the elders had misused “the virtue of forgiveness” by imposing it on the victim to avoid the perpetrator from charges for doing something harmful.

Similarly, forgiveness can be misused in the name of justice. As Nicholas Kristof explains in a Review on January 30, 2016, in the New York Times, a Pakistani girl, who survived an honor killing committed by her uncle and father, was forced to forgive them the heinous act in court. If an honor killing is forgiven, the perpetrator is set free according to Pakistani law. She was coerced into forgiving by her brother-in-law, so they could all continue to live peacefully side-by-side in the village. At the same time however, it has been written that she told a film-maker, “they should be shot in public in an open market” and said that she told someone, “in her heart she will never forgive them”.

While there is a link between justice and forgiveness in honor killings in Pakistani law, an American lawyer explains that in law school in the US, the topic of forgiveness is never broached; the only time forgiveness or rather repentance comes up in American justice, is when defense lawyers use it to try and get a milder sentence for their client. Also, another friend, daughter of a pastor, explains that counter-intuitively, from an American Christian perspective, forgiveness is totally separate from justice: when at the doors to heaven, a Christian should expect to receive the Grace of God for all Earthly sins; seeking justice, would land practically every human being in hell, so one does not seek justice at the gates to heaven….

So, while forgiveness deals with the Christian’s choice to higher moral ground, virtue, inner peace, and a relationship with God, justice remains the earthly part of dealing with the wrong-doing. While I forgive a perpetrator to liberate myself (or make myself more virtuous), I do expect him/her to not repeat the offence and also to receive justice on earth by humans (which is separate from the Grace of God).

This is where one wonders if there is not some sort of conflict of moral ground, when in states where politicians proclaim themselves as Christian and thus practicing forgiveness, they also are the politicians most likely to enforce capital punishment. What does a (Christian) Judge sincerely think or even feel when the perpetrators repent and/or victims forgive the killer, yet the jury's verdict is the killer’s killing? It almost seems like in comparison “eye to eye, tooth for tooth” is a purer, honest and direct form of moral ground and moral sentence.

Nevertheless, some parishioners of the Charleston church want to leave justice up to God in the case of the white supremacist killer. They are against the death penalty for the killer: they believe the best justice for him would be to spend the rest of his life in prison repenting, so then, in God’s time, he can face Him to seek Grace. As one victim’s family stated, “I forgive you and my family forgives you, but we would like you to take this opportunity to repent. Christ, he can change you, no matter what happens to you”. Yet, ironically the mayor of Charleston, a progressive liberal against capital punishment, declared that in this case he was in favor of executing the murderer: is to some mere mortals the white supremacist’s bloodbath unforgivable or the murderer just worth putting on the quickest path to oblivion?

Sign at Emanuel AME Church at Easter 2016

A few weeks after the murder at the Charleston Emanuel AME Church by the white supremacist, across the Atlantic and over the Alps, in the Austrian provincial capital Graz, a man drove his car through a busy pedestrian zone, with the intent of hitting and killing pedestrians. He injured near a dozen people and killed three people. Austria is a peaceful country and the murderous incident was a shock to the entire country. The town hired an emergency psychologist to help all citizens heal. There was not one public mention of forgiveness.

Instead, the city psychologist offered a mourning and healing plan, which laid out phases everyone should expect. At the same time he explained, that time and patience were impertinent to ever understanding and accepting what had happened; healing would take time.

While comparing European and American attitudes and behavior is cheesy, the Graz and Charleston incidents do highlight differences. Europeans in the face of personal tragedy let themselves hurt, show pain and raw emotion, take time to mourn and get over it, or maybe not. Americans do not seem to have that luxury.

Just as it is important to be offensively happy and smile most of the time, it is not wise to linger on being hurt in the New Continent. One must forgive and move on. Some are compelled by religion to forgive faster than others, but forgiveness is considered important for the individual’s well-being and survival in the individualistic competition-driven society. Lingering on being a victim is a risk. (If you are not the forgiving type, another anti-victim tool is the option of filing a law suit, or fighting to change laws...)

Also, as a nation, the culture seems to promote denying being a victim: when attacked, the powerful country will attack back stronger. Once hierarchy has been restored, and America is on top, the country can consider forgiving the attacker decades later. This begs the question also of Native Americans and African Americans being victims of systemic oppression - is it time for the collective victims to forgive or.... is it time for the country as a nation to repent?!

Back to the individual level, Americans pride themselves on their resilience and tackling forgiveness - some faster than others; and most proactively. Either Europeans are not as aware of the power of resilience or simply their social system allows them the luxury of healing at a less aware, slower more sustainable pace, leaving it up to them to maybe sometime and somewhere in the healing process to consider forgiveness...

Whatever the case, my non-forgiveness for the hypocrisy of a friend does not compare to the trauma experienced in the examples above. Therefore, my non-forgiveness probably has more to do with being a Central European who enjoys a dose of cynical grumpiness as an excuse to linger for hours over a Grosser Brauner at a coffee shop. It has nothing to do with overcoming trauma and making a choice on how to tackle a healing process.

Choice: that is what the world famous Austrian psychiatrist, Dr Viktor Frankl, concentration camp survivor, build his logotheraphy upon: while one might not always be able to control traumatic situations one is subject to, one can always control one's reaction to the situations and how to deal with them. Maybe that is where American forgiveness found its psychological roots...