In the
words of acclaimed writer Dream Hampton, the anatomy of an apology is as
follows: 1)I’m sorry, 2) Here’s my understanding of how I hurt you. 3) I will
never do that again. Various PR blogs expand upon this idea by stating it is important to note tone/intent,
delivery, and actions to follow. Apologies are a mainstay in our culture and we
often hold popular and powerful figures to the same acts of penance that we
expect from our close friends and family. I understand this phenomenon.
Celebrities and pundits and politicians alike are responsible as cultural
influences. They carry with them platforms to create, defend and critique
seemingly personal opinions and beliefs. When you feel they have offended, I
understand the desire to make them apologize. To apologize requires a person to
take the blame and shame of committing a wrong or an offense; offering in the
end some sort of retribution. But I think we have used apologies to further
victimize particular bodies.
Last week
MSNBC political pundit and Tulane University Professor, Melissa Harris Perry
hosted an end of the year rap up where a host of comedians were to provide
captions to some of the years most iconic photographs. Upon a Romney familyportrait featuring Kieran Romney, the adopted Black grandson to the Former Republican Presidential Candidate, the panel burst into laughter. Actor and
performer Pia Glenn alluded to the Sesame Street maxim, “one of these things is
not like the other…” and Dean Obeidallah noted it was a analogy for finding a
Black person in a Republican National convention. Perry supported and validated
these statements citing her personal history with the Mormon faith. Despite her
valid interest into the critique the media spiraled into frenzy shaming her and
her panel. She immediately apologized via Twitter, then public statement on her
show.
In a particularly cutting attack,CNN’s personal Uncle Don Lemon attempts to shame Perry for crossing a line. After pitting his two-person panel
against each other, he dives into a commentary about the nature of MSNBC’s
critiques of him. In his opening point he mentions he doesn’t respond to them
and quotes “the dog is suppose to howl at the moon, the moon isn’t suppose to
howl back.” How are we to understand that? How are we to understand his
positioning as somehow unavailable to critique? Yet he stands here demanding
that of one of his colleagues? Don, for whatever reason, features Marc Lamont
Hill who vehemently calls Lemon on his attempted color-blind respectability
bullshit. Talk of double standards and context ensue and critiques of comedy
and intent remain.
The central aspect of the critique
is that we cannot make fun of people’s families, especially their children.
This concept of saving our children, or protecting our children (though there
seems to be a preference for white or transnational) is a complex and divisive
one in America. I, in no way, believe mocking or shaming adoption however it
may occur is fair. However, there is a deeper problem here. As I’ve written before as defense, Perry and
her panel were not mocking the child but
calling to light the exploitative nature of transracial adoption. While there
must be a myriad of narratives from transracial(and transnational) adoptive
families, I have seen and heard particular traumas that these children have
faced. The erasure of history and difference, the denial of cultural awareness.
But the central issue here is the way Melissa Harris Perry was personally
attacked and vilified. The way her “colleagues,” specifically a fellow correspondent
of color could dare erase her lived experience and fair critique under some
guise of respectable humor or commentary.
While I have the utmost respect for
Perry’s apology, its slays me the outcry her comments produced. It slays me
that fellow news correspondents demand her resignation. She and her panel
simply highlighted whiteness at its core. They highlighted how the diversity
discourses place bodies of color at the crux of their narrative. What slays me
is how Don Lemon works in this way for whiteness. He works in terms of
respectability and aspiration. He works in the notion of colorblind equality.
He’s only resistance is that to act of resistance. It is viscerally
uncomfortable for him to face the truth of racial difference. But why? How does
his token, respectability jargon do? He is a living apology. He apologizes for
“under performing Blacks,” for “saggy pants wearing Blacks,” for the echoes of
Moynihan Blacks. His apology, though, completely undermines the ways Black bodies
and other bodies of color act out their resistance. Melissa Harris Perry
resists in the ways she sees fit in the face of her class and education
privilege. She calls out her location and still holds herself and panel to the
fire on countless episodes. She can critique and praise news media and her work
is informative and accessible. (I am not going to question or critique her
radicalness because there to understand resistance we must see all forms of
it). And here we find her apologizing. It is sincere and heartfelt but in my
mind horribly unfair. I would share the video below but I don’t want to
reproduce a Black Woman’s shame especially for something so scathingly unfair.
Despite his problems, Lemon’s
remarks that we can all learn something about apologies from Perry are unfortunately
too accurate. She did not excuse her actions but clearly stated how she
understood her defense and reestablished the barrier she intends to not cross.
We find in her speech the anatomy of an apology. We find the heart of how to
make right a wrong. However, we have too many women of color having to
apologize, for being assaulted, for being killed, for protecting their bodies,
for protecting their families. We have too many men and men of color demanding
such apologies from women. It is ironic then that we on the body of Dream
Hampton we find an anatomy of an apology, we find it ironic that the most
heartfelt apology of the year so far is that of a Black woman. We assume certain repentance from these bodies
and ridicule them until the apologize for being, for speaking, for demanding,
for resisting. . While we should know how to repent for trespasses ; we must be
wary who is truly trespassing against us. If there was any doubt #IStandWithMHP
and Pia Glenn.
for any feedback, comments or critiques find me on twitter @jayydodd
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