Open almost any conversation about wrongdoing in America, and the idea of forgiveness will not be far behind.
It’s one of our most cherished cultural ideals. We talk about it as a form of moral strength, as something good people do, as the final step in healing. Forgiveness is often framed as the path to closure and reconciliation. And when someone refuses to forgive, we tend to treat that refusal as a flaw rather than a legitimate response to what was done.
Myisha Cherry thinks we should slow down. Cherry is a philosopher whose work explores anger, moral agency, and the complexities of ethical life. Her recent book, Failures of Forgiveness, asks what happens when forgiveness becomes something we idolize. What gets lost when we demand it too quickly, praise it too uncritically, or treat it as the only road to healing?
I invited Cherry onto The Gray Area to talk about why forgiveness is harder and more complicated than we tend to admit, and why anger deserves more respect than we usually give it. This conversation ranges from the Charleston church shooting to family betrayal to the role of anger in political movements and the uneasy question of what collective forgiveness might look like in a country still shaped by the legacies of slavery.
As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, which drops every Monday, so listen and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What do you mean when you say we idolize forgiveness?
To idolize forgiveness is to treat it as something that can solve all our problems. It becomes a kind of magical thinking. American culture has a deep love of happy endings. We want closure. We want a moment when the pain disappears and the future brightens. Forgiveness becomes the symbol of that transformation. It’s the thing we believe will restore relationships, heal communities, and mend the past.
The problem is that when we idolize forgiveness, we give it too much power. We start thinking that refusing to forgive means you’re against repair or reconciliation. We also place far too much responsibility on victims. When forgiveness becomes the centerpiece, we imply that people who’ve been harmed must fix the world that hurt them. That’s an unfair weight to carry.
If we put too much weight on forgiveness, what do we overlook about its limitations?
First, it can’t undo what happened. The past has an afterlife. Wrongdoing leaves marks on our bodies, our memories, our relationships. Forgiveness doesn’t erase any of that. Sometimes it can help you imagine a different kind of future, but even then there are limits. You may forgive someone and still realize the relationship can’t return to what it was. That’s not a failure. It’s the reality of harm.
Second, idolizing forgiveness lets everyone except the victim off the hook. When forgiveness becomes the headline, we forget the wrongdoing. We also forget the responsibilities of the wrongdoer and the community. Forgiveness can’t replace accountability, and it can’t replace justice.
You begin the book with the Charleston church shooting. Why was that moment so revealing to you?
It was horrifying. Dylann Roof walked into a Black church that welcomed him and murdered nine people. When he was arraigned, family members of the victims spoke in court. Many said they intended to forgive him. The country was stunned by that. Headlines celebrated their forgiveness as a heroic act of grace.
My concern wasn’t with the families. I don’t police anyone’s forgiveness. My concern was with the way the rest of us interpreted it. Forgiveness became the story. Not white supremacy. Not racial terror. Not the structural harms that produced the conditions for that violence. When forgiveness takes center stage, it can let the broader community off the hook. If the victims forgive, then maybe we think the rest of us don’t have to do anything. But the work isn’t done.
It also creates a strange moral example. The message becomes that if these families can forgive an atrocity, then what excuse do the rest of us have? That kind of moral pressure is dangerous, and it ignores how hard forgiveness actually is.
Many people see forgiveness as inherently virtuous. Does refusing to forgive make someone a bad person?
Only if you think forgiveness is always a virtue. I don’t. If forgiveness is always a virtue, then refusing to forgive has to be a vice. But we know that’s not right. Not forgiving Dick Cheney for the Iraq War doesn’t mean you’re out in the streets looking for vengeance. It means you believe he committed a profound injustice.
The idea that unforgiveness inevitably leads to cruelty or violence is simply false. People can refuse to forgive and still behave with deep moral commitment. Sometimes they refuse because they believe accountability matters. Sometimes they refuse because the wound is still open. There’s nothing ethically suspect about that.
A lot of people say forgiveness matters because it lets the forgiver let go. Is that a sufficient goal?
It’s an important goal, but it shouldn’t overshadow everything else. When we tell people to forgive for themselves, we ignore the root problem. We encourage individual healing without addressing the injustice that caused the hurt. And we treat forgiveness as universally appropriate no matter what the wrongdoer has done or what the victim is facing.
Letting go can be healthy, but it can also be premature. You might not need forgiveness to let go. Therapy can help you let go. Time can help you let go. Meditation or community support can help you let go. Forgiveness isn’t the only route.
Can you forgive someone and still feel angry with them?
Absolutely. After my mother died, my stepfather brought another woman into the house. My sister and I learned about it later. It made us incredibly angry. Years afterward, my sister encouraged me to forgive him. At first, I felt judged. Then I realized I had forgiven him. I’d let go of hatred. But I hadn’t let go of anger, because the anger was honest. It expressed my belief that what he did was deeply wrong and that my mother deserved better.
Forgiveness doesn’t require the end of anger. Forgiveness requires letting go of hatred and the desire to annihilate the other person. Anger can remain because anger tells the truth about the harm.
How do you distinguish anger from hatred or contempt?
Hatred often involves wishing the person out of existence. Contempt treats them as beneath moral concern. Anger is different. Anger expresses judgment and value. It’s a call for better behavior. It says the harm mattered and the person mattered. You can’t get angry at someone you don’t care about. Anger is an investment.
That’s why anger can coexist with forgiveness. You can release hatred and contempt, choose not to pursue revenge, and still feel anger because the harm still carries meaning.
You argue that anger is a moral emotion. What do we gain by seeing it that way?
Anger can motivate justice. Joseph Butler argued that without resentment, we’d probably never pursue justice at all. Anger makes us aware that something’s wrong. It communicates solidarity with the harmed. It expresses value. When people protested for Black Lives Matter, anger was the emotional engine. It proclaimed that Black lives matter.
Anger also travels with other moral emotions. If you’re angry because you care, there’s usually love, compassion, and hope in the mix. It’s not anger in opposition to virtue. It’s anger in service of it.
Is there a risk in valorizing anger too much?
Definitely. Too much of anything can become destructive. Aristotle believed virtue lies in finding the right balance. Anger can motivate justice, but too much anger can lead to despair or violence. The same is true of love or empathy. Too much empathy can excuse harmful behavior. Too much love can undermine someone’s autonomy. The work is always to cultivate the right amount for the right reasons.
In America, we have this ugly racial history, and we’re trying to acknowledge it, deal with it, and eventually move past it, and it’s clearly difficult to do all these things at the same time. Do you think it’s possible to have national or communal repair without some form of forgiveness?
We’ve never had a national process of truth-telling. We’ve never had a collective commitment to repairing the harms of slavery. The legacy of slavery still shapes life today. Because those harms are ongoing, forgiveness isn’t even on the table. You can’t ask someone to forgive you while you’re still harming them. That’s like asking someone to forgive you while you’re still stabbing them.
Some Americans love the idea of a national forgiveness story because it would let the country move on quickly. It protects the narrative of American innocence. Baldwin warned us about this. Innocence is a myth that blocks accountability.
Yet some degree of forgiveness seems necessary for shared political life. How do you understand that tension?
Forgiveness becomes relevant because life is messy and people hurt each other. It’s a tool we can use. But it’s not always available, and it’s not always necessary. Sometimes people try to forgive and can’t. That doesn’t mean they’re broken. Other tools exist. Therapy exists. Community support exists. Structural reform exists. Accountability exists. We shouldn’t pretend forgiveness is the only route to repair.
If forgiveness were necessary for healing, then people who can’t forgive would have no hope. That’s not true. We can build futures with many tools.
Are some acts unforgivable?
People often talk about unforgivable acts, but when you look closer, you see variety. Some victims forgive extraordinary harms. Others don’t. So the idea of an intrinsically unforgivable act is hard to sustain. Forgiveness depends on the person, the context, the community, the moral and emotional resources they have.
When should someone forgive themselves? And when does self-forgiveness become avoidance?
Timing matters. If you forgive yourself too quickly, you avoid accountability. You don’t learn from what you’ve done. But if you refuse to forgive yourself indefinitely, you risk self-destruction. You can’t walk away from yourself. You have to figure out how to live with who you are. At some point, forgiveness becomes the only path that lets you continue in a meaningful way.
