How an Apology for Racial and Ethnic Bias Can Change Everything

The first African slaves arrived in the United States in 1619 and slavery lasted for 250 years. A formal government apology to those enslaved and their descendants has not been made. We are seeing some signs of progress among American citizens. It would be naive to think that even the best of apologies will erase the history of inequities, pain, and dehumanization slavery has caused us as a nation. But, we haven’t gotten very far in healing because we have not done this one crucial thing needed to start reconciliation.

You may have noticed the recent media coverable of public apologies for racial bias. Here are a couple of examples.

It is easy to conclude that the important thing is that each person apologized. In reality, the two apologies are not the same due to the impact. Let’s look a bit closer at what makes an apology.

We all know that it makes a difference, especially after we have been harmed. Receiving an apology is easy. Apologizing for the harm our actions have caused for others is another matter. Racial tension in the United States has historically been fueled by refusals to apologize for harm done. The result is a repetitive pattern of similar harm over time and reopening old sores before they can fully heal. Comparing black people to monkeys and or wearing a black face have a long history in our country. The negative stereotypes they reproduce have been socially sanctioned for a long time. Few care to have serious discussions about racism for this reason. Most suffer from ambivalence about racial differences. They view themselves as open and tolerant, while unconsciously harboring negative stereotypes. This makes it difficult for them to acknowledge their bias. But there is a beam of light shining through the dark American racial relations psyche.

“A sincere apology is an effort to live up to personal ideals and to show genuine, authentic compassion for someone who has been harmed by our actions.”

If you think about it, the proliferation of public discourse about white privilege and unconscious bias is relatively recent. While dialog about an apology and reparations for slavery has a much longer history, considerable public resistance remains. It is as though unconscious bias and white privilege discourse serve as a mirror into white American race relations psyche that discussions about the vestiges of slavery cannot compete with. The result is that white privilege and unconscious bias discussions raise inescapable questions about white Americans’ cherished “I’m not a racist” attitude. Humans are creatures that can’t help but seek answers to questions about their identity.

A sincere apology is an effort to live up to personal ideals and to show genuine, authentic compassion for someone who has been harmed by our actions.

According to Beverly Engel, the author of The Power of Apology, an apology has the power to “repair harm”, “mend relationships”, and “soothe wounds”. Here is the list of reasons that make an apology so powerful:

• The person who apologizes is fully aware of the harm her or his actions have caused.
• The power of an apology lies in the empathy shown to the person harmed by acknowledging the impact of one’s behavior.
• The apology seeks to avoid compromising a relationship and repair a relationship damaged by longstanding unapologetic acts of harm.
• An apology doesn’t undo other’s harmful acts, but it can begin the process of healing.
• An apology can disarm the wounded of the harm done to them, such as feeling sadness, seeking to get out of harm’s way, anger, and often misunderstanding.

The vestiges of slavery in the United States has left Americans with longstanding unresolved psychic harm. That is increasingly difficult to suppress. No wonder we skirt around the topic of race and pretend that slavery was too long ago to take responsibility for in the present. But we both intuitively and objectively recognize that unresolved historical racism leads to repeating the same mistakes, such as we see with the treatment of each generation of new immigrants and refugees. We vilify them as “the other” to justify treating them inhumanely.

An apology is the beginning of breaking the cycle of exclusion and harm that prevents society from fully realizing democracy, and its citizens will not reach their higher potential until it has been resolved. An apology benefits the giver and the receiver.

We certainly have treated women and Native Americans unfairly for a very long time. That needs to be recognized and addressed. At the risk of unintentionally appearing to upstage the harm other groups experienced in America, it can be said with little disagreement that slavery has had the deepest impact on Americans’ psyche. The enslavement of African Americans makes us avoid looking into the collective mirror more than any other part of our history. What society can call itself a democracy when it’s constitution did not count African Americans as not human?

Apologizing to African Americans will have the following societal benefits:

• We can openly discuss what type of democracy we want from here on.
• We can start healing the wounds of our slavery past that weighs on our collective minds.
• We can acknowledge painfully the harm our society has caused for all Americans.
• We can look at local, state, and federal policies to question our actions in the present.
• We can implement policy to safeguard against exclusion, segregation, imprisonment, and exploitation in the future.
• African Americans can move forward with a healthier view of their society and their potential as citizens.
• Americans will be healthier as a whole.

An apology is powerful. It is reflection of compassion. A civil society cannot exist or seriously promote democracy without compassionate apology for harm to citizens and noncitizens.

Is Governor Ivey’s apology as effective as anchorwoman Alex Housden’s? I will let you answer that. Here are some questions to entertain when comparing the two apologies. Whose apology appears to acknowledge and recognize the harm their actions caused? Does it matter if the harm was caused decades ago or yesterday in making your decision? Is one apology more focused on repairing relationships than the other? Which apology will likely make the offended feel soothed and open to dialog? Which apology is compassionate?

Words matter because that is typically all we have to judge each other’s sincerity. Suppose a person says or done something that is racially insensitive and they say that they are not racist,  Is that enough to let them off the hook no matter what our gut feelings tell us? I have written elsewhere that we can read people’s minds when it comes to deciding whether or not they are prejudice.  People wear racism on their sleeves. If it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, there’s a pretty good chance it’s a duck.

Our nation needs more people of all races to compassionately acknowledge harm their actions cause others. If you harm a person of another race, put aside your defensiveness so that you can fully focus on offering a genuine, heartfelt apology.

Billy Vaughn, Ph.D. CDP CDE is an award-winning cultural diversity and inclusion psychologist. He is the senior managing partner for Diversity Training University International (dtui.com), Editor in chief of Diversity Officer Magazine (diversityofficermagazine.com), and Executive Director for the Diversity Executive Leadership Academy (diversityexecutiveacademy.com). You can a learn more about him at https://dtui.com/billy-bio/