“The quote says ‘forgiveness is setting a prisoner free, only to realise that you yourself are the prisoner’”.
That’s how Chris Singleton opens up our conversation. Singleton, a former professional baseball player drafted by the Chicago Cubs, always spoke publicly to leaders, community groups, schools and sports teams as an athlete, “spreading the message of unity” and talking about his life as an athlete.
Everything changed, however, on June 17th, 2015, when a mass shooting occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Some people might remember that, after that racially-motivated shooting, Barack Obama sang Amazing Grace at the funeral of one of the people killed, senior pastor and state senator Clementa C Pinckney.
Also killed in that shooting was Singleton’s mother, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton. “I lost my mom in that shooting, I lost my hero. And I was 18 years old. And following that, I was still playing baseball, and my mission became talking about unity and spreading that around the country in the world. And so that’s how it stemmed from, you know, playing baseball and doing what I do now.”
The motive for the shooting was to trigger a race war, stir up the hatred that has destroyed American lives for so long and continues to drive a wedge between communities.
Singleton’s father died shortly after his mother and the 18-year-old had to look after his younger siblings. Baseball might have helped him do that, but he stopped his career to spread a message of communication, unity and understanding. Part of that process was to forgive his mother’s killer.
“People ask me, ‘Chris, how in the world do you forgive somebody for murdering your mom while she was in church praying?’ And what people have to realise is that I’m not forgiving him for him. This is not for him to say, ‘You know what? I’ve been forgiven by Chris. Now I can live a beautiful life’.
“No, I’m forgiving him so that I can move forward in my life. So we forgive somebody else, it gives us the freedom to stop thinking about getting revenge, stop thinking about this person because they very well might not be thinking about you at all. But they’re taking up your head space because you haven’t forgiven them. And the key to forgiveness is figuring out what’s on the other side of forgiveness for you.
“And so, for me, forgiving my mother’s killer allows me to not hate all white people, right? I don’t have to hate all white people. Because it’s not the case. It’s just one person, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who wanted to start a racial war. And so forgiving him says, ‘You know what, I don’t have to hate him to look different from me. I can love people who look different from me’. Forgiving him allows me to be a great father and husband to my family because I don’t have to constantly think about revenge. Forgiving him has helped me free up some of the PTSD I suffered because I was just nervous and scared a lot after. But I don’t have to be that way.”
At the heart of Singleton’s story is understanding where people come from with their opinions. It’s not a case where we must all agree with what everyone is saying, but it’s about unearthing why someone might have those ideas. Singleton stresses we all have biases.
“Hearing from both sides comes at the fact that we all like what we like for a couple reasons. We were either taught it, or we experienced something that makes us like what we do. You think about your favourite ice cream, you think about your favourite movie, you think about your favourite music. It’s usually because you were taught to like that music, or that ice cream or that movie, or you experienced it, and you say, man, and after this experience, I love this thing.
“And so I just want to break it down for people to understand that behind every single stance that people take is a story. And our stories are powerful. We hear somebody’s story, you learn about somebody’s story, there’s empathy there, you feel for them, and you want to know more about them. You may disagree with them, but you know their story, so you understand where they’re coming from. And that’s the work that I’m trying to do”.
Singleton is now hoping to be a hero for those who look like him, and he hopes some of them will use his story of forgiveness and unity to spread a positive message. Growing up, Singleton was fortunate to have heroes who looked like him and broke down barriers for him in baseball, like Jackie Robinson.
“Jackie Robinson, the man that broke the colour barrier in baseball, the first black baseball player in MLB, and also like, just what he went through during that time, because yes, he broke the colour barrier. But man, there were so many people that were just blatantly racist that didn’t want him to be there. The fact that he never batted an eye, he never threw a punch. He never responded in a negative way. Like that’s a strength for people to just be calling derogatory terms every single day. And you never respond in a heinous way. So inspired by him.”
Now, through his speaking tours in which he is on the road for over a third of the year, his three books for children on loving your neighbour and his adult book being published in June, Singleton not only wants to spread his message far and wide but to encourage black kids and adults to embrace their difference and to continue prospering on whatever path they choose.
