It desensitizes and conditions Black people.
In this day and age, far too many Black people have gotten used to hate crimes being committed against their people with little to no retribution. Furthermore, with every hate crime committed against Black people comes a number of Black people who care a little less about the life taken. The constant employment of the tactic of forgiveness could, over time, lead the Black race to regard the mistreatment of their people as something that must be accepted. Patton’s article explains the following: “Our constant forgiveness perpetuates the cycle of attacks and abuse, a form of ‘survivorship’ that is numbing our cognitive and emotional clarity. It’s really a distorted response to living under the constant terror and trauma of being Black in America. Repeatedly forgiving the people who keep murdering us is a desperate preemptive move to try to prevent more white harm to black persons, and it doesn’t necessarily translate to acceptance.”
It doesn’t make white people own up to their past wrongdoings.
Black victims and their families often accept apologies that were never offered. The forgiveness narrative simply lets white people off the hook. It preaches that Blacks have no choice but to forgive those who have wronged them. This narrative does not call for white people to acknowledge the heinous acts that their ancestors have inflicted upon the Black race and this narrative does not require white offenders to apologize for their hateful acts. The article released by The Washington Post states that “when black forgiveness is the means for white atonement, it enables white denial about the harms that racist violence creates.”
