Forgiveness

Whether or not Brandt Jean should have hugged and forgiven Amber Guyger, who murdered his brother Botham, is not for me to say. I have no idea what I would do in that situation because it’s impossible for me to put myself in his shoes. I won’t judge what he did or speculate why he did it.

But it did make me uncomfortable when I saw Jean hug Guyger in the courtroom. It’s hard to articulate why, but it has to do with the public’s reaction to what happened and the risk of taking the wrong lesson from this. Right away I could hear a public chorus of feel-good “aww”s at that hug. I could see people calling this “inspiring,” a word people apply for phenomena ranging from forgiveness for murder to crafting projects on Pinterest. I could see the Good Morning America-zation of this, simplifying something complex into something no deeper than a hashtag. #inspiring

I think the problem with people turning this hug into a heartwarming moment is that it can let us off the hook, let us believe that everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow and there’s no longer anything to see here. I worry that white people will see this hug as some kind of absolution for systemic racism; that we can change our racist society if wronged people just forgive, rather than actually taking steps to correct injustice. Meanwhile, Botham Jean is still dead, this bloodshed will happen again, and people who look like me will get better treatment from the legal system than people who look like him.

If there’s anything this should inspire, it’s that we should care more about these issues, and not think everything’s OK because of an excruciatingly personal forgiveness that is in danger of being extrapolated to society at large.

Much smarter people than me have written about this and I will defer to them. I still can’t fully articulate why the reaction to this bothers me, but when I saw it, I did have a visceral reaction, and it wasn’t because it warmed my heart.