Entitlement and Apologies - Part 2
The Power of Apology and Making New Shared Commitments
I often greet my readers with “aloha” but when this publishes I will be once again, unexpectedly, briefly, back in New York City. If you are a newer reader, I wrote about my most recent trip here and here. Interesting to see how even six months ago I was exploring the same themes: deepening connections, the relationship between people and place, getting my head out of the sand and taking a higher view.
I began my “going to New York City” essay last October with reflections on the practice of “land acknowledgements.” And that might be a good way to segue into Part 2 of “Entitlement and Apologies.”
Here is what I wrote:
Aloha, not from the island of Moku o Keawe from which I usually write, but from the island of Manahatta, once home of the Lenape.
It feels so awkward to write those words. The land acknowledgement is a recent tradition, a phrase recited at the opening a conference or found on an organizationʻs “About Page,” naming the people whose land was stolen. As my newly found Voice urges me to speak from the unique and sometimes confused but not entirely incoherent perspective that is mine, I confess I am ambivalent about the practice of land acknowledgement. And yet I am here to retrace footsteps of my own past self and I canʻt help but be cognizant, as I am every day in my chosen home, that I walk on pathways walked by ancestors of people who live today, and who not by choice live elsewhere than where their ancestors walked.
Sorry/not sorry if that phrase “whose land was stolen” offends.
Since I began that post and this with a land acknowledgement, I want to say something about metaphorical footsteps, next steps, the steps that should follow once one begins to recognize privilege and entitlement in themselves.1 By the way, I am still on the topic of Belonging, and the framework of Place, People, Power and Purpose, so bear with me.
Awareness - in this case acknowledging that land (Place) was stolen (from People); and further, acknowledging that privilege is inherent in the body I inhabit (People) - Awareness is absolutely important. Indeed the necessary first step. Without Awareness I do not know what I do not know, I do not see what others see, and out of that ignorance I continue to perpetuate harm.
I came to learn, from the experiences and relationships I have been writing about in They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir, that awareness and acknowledgement are necessary but not sufficient. Not if the ultimate Purpose is Belonging for all of us, the displacers and the displaced, the disempowerers and the disempowered.
In fact, I have heard a lot of very privileged, nails-on-chalkboard level privileged, “acknowledgments.” One form of privilege, of Power, is the ability to put the very wrongs being acknowledged as firmly in the past, because the repercussions of those losses do not exist in your day to day reality, the trauma does not live in your cellular memory continuing that past into every moment of your present. If you have privilege and you shrug and deny responsibility even for apologizing, saying that it was not you, not even your ancestors, who were personally responsible - that is missing the point. Your responsibility, like the trauma and daily reality of others, lives in the present - because your privilege is very much in the present.
I grew up with a basic knowledge of inequity from my parents; knowing led to learning more and gaining deeper intellectual understanding. I had lots of diverse friends and took pleasure in their recognition of my allyship. You might have noticed that in the memories and essays I write here on Substack. This broadened sense of Belonging inspired my efforts to educate others. Sometimes I would go beyond educating, and stand for my professed beliefs in careful, clever ways. Then last year I read a book, The Right Kind of White,2 that had me gulping in recognition. I had to examine how it was much too important to my self-identity to be the good haole, the exception, the special person.
Did I really want to become the norm, not the role model? Was I really committed to make change in entire systems, in power relations that are structural, even if it meant losing both my privilege - and my “special person” status?
It takes empathy, listening with empathy, to feel as well as think beyond oneʻs privilege. For me, being ready to take the next step of declaring commitments and actions that could jeopardize my self-image, my reputation, and even my physical safety, began with a painful felt sense that I was not taking care of actual People about whom I care deeply. To say the dimensions of Belonging are People, Place, Power and Purpose is analytical. To feel Belonging as a passionate care for People and Places where there was and is suffering and danger is what drove and drives me into action.
I find myself once more to be a Dignified Beginner at this work.
Discarding the blinders and ear plugs that keep me/us from seeing the differential realities and hearing the feedback I/we need to change behavior - that continues to be hard for me. I know it begins with being willing to be wrong, being willing to apologize. Soooo hard for me as a perfectionistic straight-A student! So of course it still puzzles me how to teach others to make that leap. It can feel less than genuine to ask others to do what is difficult for me, what I still often get wrong.
Apologizing is a necessary next step, one that can occur multiple times a day as one commits to a journey of learning about privilege. Not apologizing with the idea that merely saying “sorry” makes it right. And definitely not believing you know what can make it right- that assumption is itself a manifestation of privilege. I need to apologize with the intention to make reparations if the one harmed requests them. If we are committed to Belonging, we must apologize with the sincere desire to remain in and build relationship, to forge bonds of belonging to each other and to community for the sake of our shared future.
May I offer a specific example?
For the record, there are multiple ways in which I have inherent privilege. In census terms I am English-speaking, U.S. born, Caucasian non-Hispanic, cisgender female, heterosexual, educated at a post-graduate level, earning well above the annual median income. I walk into a room for a meeting and assume I have a right to be there, to express opinions, and to be heard. I assume I am in no danger for doing any of these things, nor in danger for walking down a neighborhood street, for existing. My agency and my safety are a part of my identity.
And despite my attention to not doing this, sometimes I exercise that identity, and my sense of being special, of Belonging, carelessly. It happened recently with someone with whom I work on several community projects. In a conversation I assumed a shared sense of belonging that my friend experienced as entitlement, even cultural appropriation. When this was pointed out to me, my first impulse was to justify myself. Fortunately, my commitment to accept feedback kicked in and I realized that it was up to me to take responsibility for my behavior and amend it.
The pathway to truly belonging required me to relinquish power, to relinquish the assumption that I was right. To believe my friend has the power to decide whether my behavior with him was appropriate or not and correct me. He is of this Place. Not me.
I apologized. He accepted my apology. I thanked him for being honest with me about how he felt and correcting me. I told him how much I need people who are willing to do that for me. We talked for a long time and recommitted to our Belonging.
The reward for both of us is more capacity to be in community. The reward is expanded shared Power to make good things happen for the Place and People to whom we belong. We can take care of what we care about.
To work to remedy disparities, inequities, and their consequences, even when it means giving up advantages I enjoy, this is the work at which I declare myself a dignified beginner. Now the question for me is how to do this on a larger scale. I said in last weekʻs essay that power differentials are subtle (as in the case with my friend) and more importantly, structural. How do we build new structures of Power and Belonging?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
This essay reflects my own personal journey; the Allyship Spectrum developed by Redbud Resources Group is a framework and set of resources developed by a native-led educational organization to which I would refer anyone interested in pursuing this work.
This is a useful essay for me as I engage with myself and other white women who are either doing the work or who are not but make noises about not liking what’s happening.