You guys need to get your acts together and decide whether it’s OK to say “I’m sorry if anyone was offended.” I think that’s fine, you seem to think that’s fine. Go have that out with ThornyLocust. Come up with a proper way to express “I intended no wrong, and in fact did no wrong, but I regret that the entire situation occurred.”
You’re wrong. It’s a composite of real-life situations that have actually happened. People have been accused of saying something racist, and the accusation was demonstrated to be entirely mistaken, and no racism was intended nor expressed.
Okay. So in the situation where someone falsely accused me of racism, then I should apologize anyway so as to defuse the conflict, right? Which means that the person who falsely accused me of racism also owes me an apology for imputing malign motives and dragging my name through the mud? If this is purely about smoothing over a conflict, regardless of wrongdoing, then you agree the accuser owes me an apology too? Logical consistency requires you to agree with this.
Because otherwise, what we’re really saying here is “a person who is falsely accused of racist behavior is responsible for managing the emotions of the person who accused them, and must apologize unconditionally in all situations.” To which all I can do is laugh and say “bullshit.”
The hypothetical really is that simple. It’s nothing sort of mind-boggling that participants of this thread cannot even conceive that there might be a situation where someone was accused of doing/saying something racist, yet it wasn’t. Even in make-believe land, we’re not even allowed to compute the moral valences. It’s simply unthinkable.
I have two real-life examples in mind. I’m deliberately avoiding introducing them because people look at the reported facts of what actually happened (a false accusation of racism) and cannot compute that these are exactly what they appear to be. So they pivot to suppositions of what may, might, probably happened behind the scenes, anything to alter the unthinkable situation that they’re confronted with.
Really the hypothetical has served its illustrative purpose here. People cannot even conceive that there’s a situation where someone could be falsely accused of racism. They cannot admit it could happen even in a make-believe world. The accused is always guilty. With that being the apparent situation, anyone accused of racism has only two choices: fall on their knees and beg forgiveness, or assert themselves and prepare to lose everything.
I think you owe him an apology.
>He had it coming!
Okay, hand me your phone.
>No, no no!
Either you apologize or give me your phone.
> (facial expression: ) I’m sorry for hurting you, I won’t do it again.
And why are you sorry?
>Because I don’t want to lose my phone!
I think not. It has all three elements you asked for, acknowledging hurt, regret (the reason for regret is punishment), and a promise not to repeat. I think it is missing remorse, therefore not an apology.
You’re sitting in a movie theatre, watching a movie. Some kid up front says something quiet that you hear but can’t understand. Another kid of some minority says, “that’s racist!” The first replies, “sshhhh, no it’s not”. The second kid stands up and demands an apology. This blocks the view of many moviegoers, yourself included. First kid refuses. An employee walks over and says, “come on, either sit down or take it outside”. “Not until I get my apology.” &etc.
Without knowing whether the first kid is racist, it is evident to me that this second kid who is literally a minority standing up for their deserved dignity as a human being, is an asshole for doing so.
IMHO, the standard ought to be that something is by default non-racist until or unless there is good reason to believe it is racist. That is, presumption of innocence should apply. On top of that, society would do well to go by the principle of “don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance.”
So if, for instance, a professor has a hard time telling black students apart, that may just be because - you know - many people have a hard time distinguishing between people of a race different than their own. I would bet a big chunk of money that these same people who lambast the professor for doing so would have a hard time distinguishing a group of, say, Korean people apart from each other, when presented with such a photograph and then later quizzed on who was who.
Did you read the longer description of the incident posted by Kimstu in post 63? Sounds like this professor was a pain in the ass in lots of ways, and this was just the latest incident.
‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it that way; what I meant was [this].’
Might need adjusting depending on the details of the incident; which is why people keep saying that your overall supposition is too vague to allow anyone to provide clear reactions.
There are lots of social situations in which it’s appropriate for both parties to apologize.
It isn’t dragging anybody’s name through the mud to tell them that they said something that sounds racist. I’ve already addressed this.
I don’t believe anybody in this thread has said anything of the sort.
Considering how badly you seem to be misinterpreting what people have said in the thread, I wonder whether you may not also be misinterpreting what the people in your incidents actually said.
Nobody in this thread has lambasted the professor for mixing up the students.
As near as I can tell from the information we’ve got, not even the students “lambasted” him. Two of them, according to the information we’ve got, tried to discuss with him the problem that he kept repeatedly getting their names wrong, in and during a 14 person class which had been going for some time. (I have no idea where “such a photograph” comes from.) It appears to have been either his wildly inappropriate reaction to this that got him fired, or possibly that he hadn’t been paying enough attention to individual students – again, in a 14 person class – to do his job.
I’m afraid that ship sailed long ago. Systemic racism underpins society, or at least the modern Western society we all partake in. There is no “presumption of innocence”. “Everyone’s a little bit racist”, as the puppets said. People (and before anyone starts - I’m not just talking about White people) have to actively show they’re fighting that system.
Not directly, but certain things are imputed by the fact that nobody is even willing to entertain a scenario in which an accuser got heated up over something that turned out to be entirely innocent. And there’s no mistaking this point - everyone in this thread who has been faced with this hypothetical, has chosen to either (a) fight the hypothetical, or (b) suggest that everyone who makes an accusation of racism is entitled to some sort of apology, regardless of whether the accusation was utterly baseless.
I’m sure I’ll regret giving a concrete example here, but recall the tale of the communications professor who used a word of Mandarin that sounded like a racial slur. He didn’t use it as a slur, he wasn’t making oblique references to race. Although 94 Chinese alumni authored letters of support that yes, this was a routine and uncontroversial word in Mandarin, he was forced to stop teaching the class, he was forced to submit a written(!) apology because the word “ne gah” was too close to the N-word in English, and “Brittany” was offended that he had the temerity not to censor the Mandarin language to suit her own anglo-centric sensibilities.
Why should he have apologized? He did nothing wrong. Absolutely, objectively, he did nothing wrong. If anyone owed anyone apology, “Brittany” owed an apology to the professor and the institution for baselessly stirring shit. But as I’ve shown, these rituals aren’t about righting wrongs or soothing feelings. They are always and only about reinforcing the supremacy of the accuser in every question of racism, no matter how transparently spurious they may be.
Indeed. It’s possible to apologize for being clueless, or for failing to communicate effectively.
Today I was teaching students to make 3D snowflakes. A lot of kids were doing well, but one boy was trying really hard, and he just could not get that he was supposed to cut the paper triangle parallel to the longest side. I showed him, I demonstrated, I described it three different ways–and every time he cut it, he cut at a significant angle to the longest side.
I didn’t want him to get frustrated; I wanted him to keep trying. So I apologized for not communicating well with him.
And I meant it. It’s my job to teach, and if I’m not teaching, I’m sorry that I’m not. I kept trying, and I eventually got better: I thought of a different way to express the idea, and with my new approach, he understood.
What does that have to do with it? There are a few different legit ways to apologize:
Shit, that was racist. I know I have these messed-up attitudes and I struggle with them. I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m working on getting rid of those attitudes. I apologize.
Shit, that was racist. You explained something to me that I didn’t know or hadn’t thought about, and now I understand how that perpeatuates racist dynamics. I didn’t intend to, but I did cause some harm, and now that I understand I won’t do that going forward. I apologize.
Huh. Was that racist? I’m not entirely sure I understand why you believe it was racist, but I do understand that what I did resulting in your being hurt. Since I know that it hurts you, I won’t do that again. I apologize.
[This is like me and the snowflake craft] Yikes–I really screwed that up! The expression I used did not communicate what I intended to communicate, and I either didn’t properly consider the context of my communication, or I didn’t know a key part of the context in which I was communicating. In either case, now that I understand this context, I can communicate more effectively and avoid saying things that come across as racist. I apologize.
Then there are the non-apologies:
5) Jesus, man, it’s pretty clear that you’re using the language of antiracism to try to win an unrelated argument. Telling me I’m racist because I support the closure of the preschool you (a wealthy white person) send your child to is cynical, and you can miss me with all your “BUT MONTESSORI CLOSES THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP SO YOU’RE RACIST” nonsense. I don’t owe you an apology.
6) You’re perverting the idea of “racist” to support a white supremacist agenda. Using the word in the exact opposite of its useful meaning–using “racist” to mean “anti-racist”–is such insane gibberish that I can only take the accusation as a messed-up compliment. I don’t owe you an apology.
7) Etc.
If you’re accused of racism, and you genuinely believe you said nothing racist, you can still realize that you failed to account for the context in which your communication happened. #4 is a perfectly legitimate apology to make, and shows you as someone who takes responsibility for their own communication instead of having a solipsistic “I sez what I sez and if others don’t appreciate my genius that’s their own damn fault” attitude.
It definitely implied a particular social setting. One where someone talking loudly is not automatically an asshole, as they would be in a movie theatre. The implication in your original post was that it was the insistence on an apology that made them an asshole, not the specific contrived locale and the extra social conventions attached to behaviour there.
So, congrats on the great setup for your gotcha, I guess?
But that’s the case in actual parties, too. For example during a house party, if you are shouting over the music to demand an apology (or worse, if you turn off the music / cause the music to be turned off because you are making such a disruption), IMO you are automatically the an asshole.
This line of reasoning seems to pass the common sense test. We live in a free society, and one is free to accuse others of wrongdoing - intentional or unintentional - however, the burden of proof has always been the claimant’s. It’s sort of a bedrock principle that the notion of justice is built upon and applies regardless of whether one is making an argument or being charged with a crime. This is not to say that instances of racism shouldn’t be rooted out, because they should wherever they can be proven.
Saying that every accusation of racism is always and only about reinforcing the supremacy of the speaker. Saying that it is “always and only” about that is clearly also saying that there has never been an accusation of racism that wasn’t about that. I can’t really see any other way to interpret your words.
) I’m sorry for hurting you, I won’t do it again.