My dad will be the one who needs to shift. That man is like granite. He’s old school, from a generation that still sees emotions as something you don’t share, like an old-movie cowboy. I think he still carries pain about my birth mother all these years later. I think he never forgave her, and until he forgives her the wound won’t heal. That will happen. I feel it in my heart, but I don’t think he’s there yet. Nothing against him, but it puts pressure on me to be the bridge between people and the glue to hold us together, to keep pushing the envelope, and to try to move everyone out of their comfort zones. This book is called Things That Make White People Uncomfortable, but forgiving your family? That is one thing that truly does transcend skin color. That’s on all of us to confront. If it makes us uncomfortable, that’s a sign we need to try harder.
As for my mom who raised me, Miss Pennie, she is a little scared, too. I don’t think she’d ever admit it, but I think she carries some fear that our relationship could suffer. I want Miss Pennie to understand that she is my mom. She raised me. Everything that I am is because of her. Her gift of teaching me how to question the world is something I’ll never be able to repay. I want her to know that no matter how much my relationship with my birth mom grows, it doesn’t take anything away from our bond. It makes her an even greater mother, a greater human being, to have done what she did: taking on somebody else’s children and raising them as her own. Her whole life is a testament to her character. There’s more than enough place for both of my moms in my heart and around my table. That’s my dream: a Mother’s Day celebration, where all the mothers are together. We go around the table, my daughters, Pele, and then me, and we all say what our mother means to us—and I get to talk twice. That’s my idea of peace.
The pain that I’ve felt on this journey of reconnecting with my birth mom is something I need to share. I want to share it so maybe someone who is experiencing something similar doesn’t feel all alone in the world. I think when you feel isolated is when you do self-destructive things, like take your life or harm yourself or withdraw and become some kind of hermit. We share our stories so we feel less alone.
I can’t separate the efforts to forgive and put my family together with my efforts to try and organize to change the world. Forgiveness has always been central to our Black freedom struggle. I mentioned this to my dad to try to help him along on this road. I said, “Think about Dr. Martin Luther King. He literally could walk into a room and be spit on, kicked, hit with a brick, have lit cigarettes flicked at his face, and keep walking, keep a level head, and show love. He was literally walking and forgiving people as they committed these transgressions because he knew to get to where he wanted, spiritually, he had to do it.”
I don’t know if I can ever reach that level. I still get mad when a coach yells at me or some member of the media asks me a dumbass question. (Five minutes after losing a game: “So, how do you feel about that loss?” How do you think I feel? Even Dr. King might smack someone for that dumb shit.) But I think that has to be the goal: the ability to forgive someone on the spot. It’s so easy to throw a punch. It’s so easy to shoot back. But to be able to forgive? There’s an organization of the families of murder victims that protests against the death penalty. That’s the level we need to aspire to. It’s not easy when revenge is held up in movies and music as the ultimate expression of manhood, instead of how it should be seen: as the response of the child.
I would argue that to get to that level of mercy and grace starts at home. It starts with forgiving people. I told that to my dad, and he was silent. Then he said, like that old-movie cowboy, “I never even thought about that.” It was small, but I felt him move in my direction, toward where I hope he can go.
In each case, the need to forgive is a precondition for achieving justice. I can forgive anyone for anything they have said or done, or that their ancestors said or did, as long as they are willing to work with me to make sure today’s version of Jim Crow—from mass incarceration to inferior access to education and nutrition, to police violence—gets beaten back. There is a need to forgive but never forget, because if we are not honest about the past, we will never change our present or future. If it makes some people uncomfortable, then that’s the price of change. It’s not comfortable to confront the part of our history that make us feel shame. It’s not comfortable for me to sit for the anthem while people boo. It’s not comfortable to lose sponsors or give away endorsements. It’s not comfortable to go to parts of the world or parts of this country where suffering is a way of life. But guess what? You have to be uncomfortable to grow. When you grow as a child, it’s so intense that your body is knocking your own teeth out of your mouth so stronger, better teeth
