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Demonstrators march across the Brooklyn Bridge and along Broadway to Foley Square in New York City, June 13, 2020.
Self-improvement is an American national pastime. White self-shaming in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder may be a necessary phase en route to real change. But it sure is getting tedious.
Here is a very earnest and well-intentioned letter, blog-posted by a white guy named Scot Loyd, in which he apologizes to a black classmate, now dead, for failing to take him seriously. He ends with the words:
Roy, I’m sorry man. I’m sorry that I didn’t know better. That I didn’t do better. I’m sorry that I’m just now saying this, years after your death. I’m listening now. I’m learning now. I’m speaking up now.
I hope you can hear me. I love you.
Scot
Not surprisingly, Scot gets flamed by innumerable scathing comments. This gives him an opportunity to make amends yet again:
Some have pointed out that although my sentiment may be genuine, at times it smacks of insincere opportunism further exploiting the black body of my friend. This was certainly not my intention, but I believe it is a fair critique.
Oy.
As African Americans keep pointing out, the work to be done is in the white community. Figure out how to use our overarching power for structural change, and stop making personal amends.
I’m reminded of occasional phone calls I used to get around the time of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. There is a custom in some congregations of contacting people and offering generic apologies. In one such call, a guy who was a total jerk called me out of the blue and said he was sorry for anything he might have done in the past year that offended me. The next year, he was still a jerk.
Talk is cheap. Maybe, next Juneteenth, we can celebrate more white people working for the profound structural change that America needs, and fewer ones making amends.
