Apologies: A White Person’s Guide

Dearest Karen and Chet,

In the immortal words of Peter Cetera, “It’s hard for me to say I’m sorry”.

Apologies are never easy. That’s because they fight against every instinct we have that suggests that, in most situations, we are, were, and will continually be in the right. Human beings are hardwired this way; it takes a level of introspection to look at an action you’ve taken and really, truly admit you’re wrong.

I know that this seems obvious, Chet and Karen, but think about it; it took America electing it’s first black President for the government to formally apologize for slavery.

Unfortunately, white people seem to hate to admit that they are wrong for *check notes* pretty much anything, at least as it pertains to racism. Now, I can already see Chet coming up with a familiar line of thinking that white folks thinks shields them from any and all criticism;

“Why should I have to apologize for things my ancestors did? I donate to the NAACP College Fund. I’ve been known to enjoy a Drake song or two. I was only mad about Colin Kaepernick wearing pig socks for a couple of years before realizing he was being blackballed. Doesn’t that make me better than my ancestors?”

I mean, technically, “not thinking it’s okay to own another human being” makes you better than your ancestors. Hell, maybe your ancestors didn’t even own slaves.

You should still probably say sorry for it, though, if only because we haven’t yet developed the technology to reawaken your dead ancestors, introduce them to new concepts like computers and the musical stylings of Lizzo, and adjust their entire way of thinking about black people before making them apologize. I know you’re not asking a lot on this front, but give us time, Chet.

Apologies from white people are all the rage right now, as they keep stepping on rakes in an effort to differentiate themselves from “the real racists” and try and showcase that they’re actual allies, and always have been allies. Take Karen’s best friend Connie. After my man Gary Chambers SAID*CLAP*WHAT*CLAP*HE*CLAP*SAID to Connie Bernard, Bernard issued an “apology” where she, pretty explicitly, didn’t actually apologize for anything she’d said or done.

My comments last week about the naming of Lee High School were insensitive, have caused pain for others, and have led people to believe I am an enemy of people of color, and I am deeply sorry. I condemn racial injustice in any form. I promise to be part of the solution and to listen to the concerns of all members of our community. I stand with you, in love and respect.

World Famous “Karen” Connie Bernard

Now that might seem like a perfectly cromulent apology to Karen, who has to write one of these apologies everytime the CEO at her company says or does something that is racist, sexist, or both. (Seriously Karen, we’ve got to get you out of HR.)

But allow me to go full Genius on this apology and point out how it’s not really an apology, and how it follows the same basic structure of lots of white apologies. Basically it goes like this;

1.) Explain that at some point in the past, you said and/or did some racist shit.

2.) Convey that whatever said white person did was insensitive/hurtful/harmful/unkind.

3.) Conveniently leave out that the actions were wrong.

4.) Tie it back into a statement about how you always been an ally of people of color in spite of doing some racist shit.

5.) Make a tepid statement of solidarity.

6.) Still not saying anything you did was wrong.

The problem with Connie and the reason she got called out was not simply because she made some “insensitive” remarks about Robert E. Lee. The problem was that she was completely uninterested in hearing the members of her communities concerns, cobbled together some racist bullshit for why the name of a building can’t be changed and how he actually “freed slaves”, and totally disregarded anything Gary Chambers and a number of speakers had said in order to shop for some pantsuits from Chicos.

She didn’t say sorry for being disrespectful, she didn’t say she was wrong about Robert E. Lee, and she didn’t personally apologize to Chambers. Saying the words were “insensitive” conveys a level of misunderstanding why people were pissed. They weren’t insensitive; they were racist, and they were wrong, and in actual apology would talk about how they were wrong. It puts the onus back on the offended instead of the offender admitting any sort of wrongdoing.

As another example, let’s take a look at alleged late night talk show and “Great Value Jimmy Fallon” Jimmy Kimmel’s “apology” for, among other things, wearing blackface and spouting the n-word like it was nothing for a “comedy Christmas CD”, which sounds like what they play on repeat in Hell on the sweet baby Jesus’ birthday.

“I have long been reluctant to address this, as I knew doing so would be celebrated as a victory by those who equate apologies with weakness and cheer for leaders who use prejudice to divide us,” he wrote. “That delay was a mistake. There is nothing more important to me than your respect, and I apologize to those who were genuinely hurt or offended by the makeup I wore or the words I spoke.”

via The Washington Post

“In the late 90s, I continued impersonating Malone on TV. We hired makeup artists to make me look as much like Karl Malone as possible,” Kimmel further explained. “I never considered that this might be seen as anything other than an imitation of a fellow human being, one that had no more to do with Karl’s skin color than it did his bulging muscles and bald head.”

“I’ve done dozens of impressions of famous people, including Snoop Dogg, Oprah, Eminem, Dick Vitale, Rosie, and many others. In each case, I thought of them as impersonations of celebrities and nothing more,” Kimmel went on to say. “Looking back, many of these sketches are embarrassing, and it is frustrating that these thoughtless moments have become a weapon used by some to diminish my criticisms of social and other injustices.”

Via CNN

[…]

“I believe that I have evolved and matured over the last twenty-plus years, and I hope that is evident to anyone who watches my show,” Kimmel wrote. “I know that this will not be the last I hear of this and that it will be used again to try to quiet me. I love this country too much to allow that. I won’t be bullied into silence by those who feign outrage to advance their oppressive and genuinely racist agendas.”

via The Washington Post

If someone can point to where there’s an apology for wearing blackface anywhere in his comments, I’d love for them to point this out. Instead, it lingers on explaining the context of why Kimmel impersonated various black people, and once again circles back to how he’s personally hurt that “these moments have been used as a weapon” by some sort of unknown enemy instead of by black people and people of color who are offended by his actions.

He even tries to make himself a hero at the end, refusing to be “bullied” by “those who feign outrage”. Jimmy Kimmel, a man who would obstensibly consider himself a liberal, is out here talking about how people getting mad that he was in blackface and using the n-word is just fake news.

There have been scores of white apologies that have come out in light of racial protests, and almost all of them follow this same problem of deflecting from what the real core of the issue is. They rarely talk about how they are simply wrong for doing what they were doing, and instead deflect and rationalize those actions and apologize for the actions offending and hurting people, but not talking about what makes those actions so bad. In many cases, they act indignant that they’re getting chastised at all.

Here’s an example, Chet; let’s say you finally get around to asking Doug for your lawnmower back, and you admit that you’re pretty upset and hurt that he took your act of neighborly kindness and exploited it for the past five years. You even had to buy a new lawnmower! Your life has been made harder by Doug’s actions. You had to buy a new lawnmower and a new extension cable and everything!

Now imagine Doug looked you in the face and said, “well, I’m sorry for the way you feel about me taking your lawnmower. The people who know me know my heart, and they can tell you that I am an ally of friendly neighbors everywhere. I have always stood against theft and have long been a member of the Neighborhood Watch, and I am truly frustrated that anyone could take my totally innocent actions of taking your lawnmover and forgetting to give it back to you for five years and use it to demean my character. I look forward to the future where you won’t mistakingly think I’m malicious in my intent to keep your things without asking your permission first.”

Now, just think for a moment Chet; if this had been just another in a long line of lawnmower based incidents, where Doug kept half-way apologizing but not saying “taking your shit and not giving it back is wrong and I will immediately give you this back”, wouldn’t you want to start tearing down statues of his ancestors too?

White apologies are the worst apologies, because very often, white people simply don’t think they’re doing anything wrong when they take these actions. That is a privilege that whiteness conveys; the ability to not think about a harmful action towards a different race before doing it. Every white person who gets caught doing blackface thinks they were doing it innocently, or that they were doing it as a subversion, or that they were just trying to be funny, and they just couldn’t know that the racist thing they were doing was racist.

My wife is Hispanic and wanted to do bridal henna for her wedding, partially as a gesture towards one of her best friends, who is Indian, and partially because well done henna looks pretty awesome. But it was her black best friend who informed her that doing such in a thing, even if the intentions are right, would probably still be cultural appropriation of some sort, and even if her Indian friend and probably no one else present at the wedding would be offended, doing such would still probably be a bad idea. And while my wife wasn’t thrilled about not being able to do it, she nevertheless understood how weird it would be if she were to go to her Indian’s friend wedding and she had appropriated something from her culture.

That sense of “maybe this thing we think okay isn’t okay because how would I feel if someone did this to me” doesn’t resonate with white people, because appropriating cultures is just what white people do. “White people” have no discernible culture of their own; instead they have a mish-mashed hodge podge of other people’s traditions. That’s why your coworker Maria looked at you sideways when you wished her a “Happy Cinco De Mayo” while wearing a giant sombrero and organizing an office bar crawl, Karen; she’s from Panama and has zero cultural attachment to the holiday, and even if she did, you’re still doing it wrong. And if you apologized for they way she felt about you insinuating she was Mexican, even though she’s not, instead apologizing for being wrong and racist, you would not only be wrong, but potentially even more wrong than you had started off being.

The golden rule when it comes to apologies is that they actually need to be apologies. It’s not enough to say “I’m sorry”. When I got in trouble as a kid and apologized, my mom used to say “are you sorry for what you did, or are you sorry you got caught?”. There is a key distinction between the two that has to be made when you choose to apologize.

If you can’t take it from me, take it from American Idol’s Ruben Studdard, who apologizes not just for a single incident, but the entirety of the year 2004. That’s a guy who’s sorry.

When apologizing to a person or group of color, the first words that should come out of your mouth or be written in an Instagram post are “I WAS WRONG.” It should say “I WAS WRONG FOR DOING X, Y, Z. To make amends, I’m going to do a, b, and c going forward. There are no excuses, no justifications, no ‘additional context’ for my actions; I messed up, embarrassed myself, and I deserve no pity or shame for doing so. I deserve the criticism I’m getting and the best I can do is learn from doing something so careless, thoughtless and stupid.”

People of color may not instantly like you again, but they’ll at least respect you for being more honest than your other white peers.

Sincerely,

Your black friend.