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Myisha Cherry: Failures of Forgiveness (2023, Princeton University Press)

Failures of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a timely topic. Perhaps you have been troubled, as I have, at the ways in which victims of crimes (particularly Black victims of racially motivated crimes) seem rushed by the media or public to forgive their attackers. Cherry's book unpacks all aspects of forgiveness, and has clearly thought in depth about how forgiveness impacts both the perpetrator and the victim. I was particularly struck by her exploration of how the rush to publicly forgive absolves the larger community from having to think about the larger structural issues at play -- in the above example, if the Black victim forgives the white perpetrator, then the larger white community doesn't have to think too hard about racism, which is doubtless why the pressure is there. A thoughtful exploration of a complex topic.