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      Charleston and Christchurch and the Politics of Postracial Forgiveness

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      postracial, forgiveness, white supremacy, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, secularism
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            Abstract

            This article explores the political work of forgiveness in a secular liberal West by examining the aftermath of two white supremacist violent events: the Charleston church attack in 2015 and the Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019. The article examines how the exaltation of forgiveness over anger after such events is symptomatic of what David Theo Goldberg (2015) calls the “postracial” turn which denies the structural harm of racism and privileges social unity at a time when racism bears its most violent face. What can be ascertained in centring forgiveness, and therefore the unifying figure of the victim of white supremacist violence, is how the postracial conceals the persistence of race as the secular investment and regulation in the articulation of religion in public life.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Contributors
            Journal
            10.13169/reorient
            ReOrient
            ReO
            Pluto Journals
            2055-561X
            2055-5601
            06 May 2022
            2022
            : 7
            : 1
            : 4-26
            Author notes
            [* ] Correspondence: Sahar Ghumkhor ( ghumkhor@ 123456unimelb.edu.au )
            Article
            10.13169/reorient.7.1.0004
            897458e5-53d5-4534-b66e-3a63ede8692b

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Page count
            Pages: 23
            Categories
            Articles

            Literary studies,Religious studies & Theology,Social & Behavioral Sciences,History,Philosophy
            secularism,anti-Black racism,Islamophobia,white supremacy,forgiveness,postracial

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