On June 17th, 2015, my family stood around the TV, tears in our eyes, as the news broke that Mother Emanuel, our sacred space, was the site of a mass shooting. My mom traded phone calls back and forth as news came in that her colleague and friend, Rev. Pinckney, had been killed, and with him, two more of her brother and sister ministers in the AME South Carolina Conference. We attended the first vigil the next day at Morris Brown AME Church, which was evacuated due to a bomb threat shortly after. We had been a part of Rev. Sharonda Singleton’s funeral, my mother standing with the South Carolina Conference women in ministry to commemorate one of her sisters, me in the choir stand singing, “My Hope Is Built,” with crying members of the Emanuel choir. We shook hands with white Charlestonians, we watched as the families forgave Dylann Roof, we observed as the cameras came in and out, and we skeptically agreed as the community resolved on a “love” and “forgiveness” narrative in the aftermath of the shooting. We also saw, before our eyes, how politics and theologies of "reconciliation" were simply fronts for preserving the status quo.
In the aftermath of the shooting, guilt-ridden white Charlestonians poured into Emanuel’s doors, Charleston was filled with dialogue about race and injustice, and lawmakers removed the confederate flag in an exuberant ceremony manned by a diverse, cheering crowd. However, as the weeks, months and years went on, those events ground to a halt before moving into reverse: the cameras left, the number of white faces worshipping at Emanuel dwindled back to zero, and the dialogue around racial justice in Charleston quieted. A few months ago, the South Carolina Secessionist Party hung confederate flags on various public properties and hosted a flag rally in the heart of Charleston. Police arrested Charleston activist Muhayidin Elamin D'Baha when he attempted to forcibly confiscate a battle flag from a party member, and local conservatives responded on social media by condemning his "disrespect for private property" and using racial slurs. Even as I wrote this piece, another article was released detailing how a landmark at Folly Beach was painted over with confederate flags—two days before the anniversary of the shooting. And finally, on the night of November 8th, Donald Trump won South Carolina and most of the country in the presidential election, dominating the polls with a political message built on racism, intolerance, and restoring an America of “law and order” and white supremacy.
As the news station forecasted a dominant Trump victory in South Carolina the night of the election, I couldn’t help but ask, “What was Emanuel for?" They still haven’t learned, and they never will.
“We gave them forgiveness,” my mom said angrily, “and they gave us Trump.”
After Emanuel, the families of the slain, the local AME Church and the white South Carolina community spoke of politics and theologies of forgiveness as the means through which South Carolina and the nation would heal. Very few, however, spoke of an equally important political and theological necessity on which forgiveness depends: repentance.
Through the long, troubled racial history of the United States, we still have not grasped the mutual relationship between forgiveness and repentance. Historically, black Americans have extended forgiveness for slavery, segregation and ever-evolving forms of white supremacist violence, even as white Americans have refused to apologize or make amends for their wrongs. In the Black Lives Matter era, white America consistently assures us that if we would stop protesting, cease our "shouting," be less aggressive, stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and simply "forgive" and act "respectably," that hearts will change and justice will come. The AME Church and the black Charleston community supposedly epitomized what it meant to do things "the right way": we hugged it out, prayed together, extended forgiveness to Dylann Roof and to a city that criminalizes and displaces black residents in the hopes that our struggles might be humanized. But what did we receive in return? The moment South Carolinians had the chance to substantively show us their "changed hearts" in the form of basic political action, they voted for the man whose words about "the good old days" and the criminality of black and brown Americans rang eerily similar to Dylann Roof's. They cast their ballots for the candidate endorsed by David Duke, KKK members and Neo-Nazi groups, whose ideologies radicalized Roof and drove him to open fire on 12 black church members as they prayed.
It is 2017, two years after the massacre, and were it not for the large sign marked “Mother Emanuel Way” on Calhoun Street, the occasional update on the Dylann Roof trial, or the forums and prayer sessions hosted on the anniversary of the shooting, Charleston and South Carolina as a whole look much the same. The black community that built downtown Charleston can no longer afford to live there as property values continue to increase and wealthy white families move into the city. The dialogue around the Walter Scott shooting and the North Charleston Police Department continues to be deeply polarized; the comments sections of news articles about the trial house racist venom and white rage referring to an unarmed black man as a “thug.” Charleston County schools are still a testament to economic and racial disparity. The only remarkable difference is that Donald Trump is president, daily reaffirming his commitment to further entrenching these disparities and injustices.
So, I write as a young, frustrated black South Carolinian and lowcountry AME. Two years after the shooting at Mother Emanuel, white Charlestonians, white South Carolinians and white Americans have shown us the yields of reconciliation without accountability. How long will we continue to forgive the unrepentant?
