How do humans develop hope in the face of seemingly irreparable harm against each other? Drawing on interviews and participant observation with 30 BIPOC Christians and 40 White Christians whom they identified as long‐term allies, in this article, I consider how a slim minority of White Christians develop ways of hoping that sustain lasting antiracist engagement. I identify contributing factors to reorientations of hope, focusing on a type of catalytic event that I analyze as a form of exchange. As economic anthropologists from Marcel Mauss to David Graeber have elaborated, structures and moralities of gift giving reveal and define relationships. I extend that theory to argue that experiences of exchange relationships in turn shape the ways people hope. I trace a logic of exchange that interlocutors conceptualized using the term grace, an incongruous, freely given gift that anticipates future relationship in the context of unrepayable debt. As White Christians became highly aware of the systemic and historic immensity of racial injustice, their combined awareness of indebtedness and grace became formative to new kinds of relationship and hope. In response, they imagined and pursued a society in which love and repair across chasms of past harm are not taken for granted but are not impossible.

中文翻译：

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忘却希望：白人基督徒遭遇恩典作为交换的逻辑

面对彼此看似无法弥补的伤害，人类如何抱有希望？在本文中，我根据对 30 名 BIPOC 基督徒和 40 名被他们视为长期盟友的白人基督徒的采访和参与观察，思考了极少数白人基督徒如何发展希望维持持久反种族主义参与的方式。我确定了重新定位希望的促成因素，重点关注我将其作为交换形式进行分析的一种催化事件。正如马塞尔·莫斯（Marcel Mauss）和大卫·格雷伯（David Graeber）等经济人类学家所阐述的那样，送礼的结构和道德揭示并定义了关系。我扩展了这一理论，认为交换关系的经历反过来塑造了人们希望的方式。我追溯了对话者使用术语概念化的交换逻辑优雅，一种不协调的、免费赠送的礼物，预示着在无法偿还债务的情况下未来的关系。随着白人基督徒高度意识到种族不公正的系统性和历史性的巨大性，他们对债务和恩典的综合意识形成了新的关系和希望。作为回应，他们想象并追求一个社会，在这个社会中，爱和跨越过去伤害的鸿沟的修复不是理所当然的，但也不是不可能的。