Own, Apologize, Repair: Coming Back to Integrity

blacktailcat:

thetwistedrope:

There is a variation on ‘Not All Men.’

It is called ‘I Feel Bad When You Say That.’

Kyle and his dad are at the table. Kyle is restless and grouchy about
having fruit for dessert when he wanted ice cream. He is kicking. His mum tells him, “are you feeling angry because you wanted ice cream?
It’s ok to feel angry. I hear you. All of your feelings are good. It’s
not ok to kick people, though. If you feel angry you can say ‘I feel
angry!’ You’re always allowed to feel anything you want, but kicking is
not ok.” Kyle, still flailing, kicks his dad on the shin.

At the end of his rope – but still modelling for his son how to
handle anger – his dad says “You know what Kyle, my feelings are hurt
because you kicked me. I don’t want to sit next to you right now.” And
he goes to a different room. Kyle runs off to his room. Meanwhile, Kyle’s mum says “Kyle, you kicked dad, come back and say sorry and make it right.”

Kyle comes back to his mum, crying, and says very intensely, his cute six-year-old face expressive and utterly for real:

“You said I kicked dad! You’re saying I’m bad! That hurts my feelings! You have to say sorry!”

This moment is a kind of hilarious moment, for the adults. He is
using precisely the language we teach him to use (name hurtful action,
name your feelings, ask for repair), except…

It is a good learning moment, for Kyle.

We can’t laugh. It’s tempting, but we don’t.

This logic is impeccable. Impeccable like a… like something snarky I can’t repeat.

Let’s slow this down, sports-replay style:

Kyle kicks dad.

Parent says: “Kyle, you kicked dad.”

So far so good.

Kyle says: “You said I kicked dad!”

That hurts my feelings!

You have to say sorry!”

oy.

He is kind of getting the point? Except kind of not getting it at all? He actually thinks that his bad feeling at being told he kicked his father is the same thing as the kick itself. The thing is that Kyle is absolutely genuine in his distress, upset and crying. He really means what he is saying. He hasn’t made this connection yet, and we have to make it for him. He is glowering intensely, crying, genuinely needing to be heard and
his great big eyes expressing his fury, fear, and confusion, as only a
six year old can do.

What is the appropriate response here?

His mum, suppressing a mix of bemused laughter and exasperation, says, carefully: “Kyle, it is true that we teach you no one is bad. I love you and you are good. But you did kick dad. It is ok for you to hear that, and I do not need to apologize. Now go say sorry and make it right.”

She is absolutely firm on this. She does not apologize for naming his
actions or their effects, and she corrects his mixing up of one thing
with another. He has to learn this at some point if he is ever going to
be an accountable man.

This is the demon that I feel arising in my classroom around week
three as we talk about the hard facts of colonization, of our collusion
with it as settlers, and that it has not ended but is ongoing. This kind
of wild serpent of fear and danger arises in the back of the room and –
since I am white and a settler – if I have done my job well, the
students having these inner demons will come talk to me during office
hours, saying wildly racist and historically inaccurate things as I
listen and listen and help them identify reality and where it diverges
from their inner wildlings of shame. I do my best to siphon their demons
out of the classroom but I am aware that (depending on the topic at
hand) Indigenous or POC students in these classrooms are often asked to
feel perpetually, extremely uncomfortable and to get traumatized by
having to be in these spaces, just so my white students don’t have to
experience even momentary discomfort. I see it as part of my job as a
white person to notice this massive discrepancy is happening, that it is
naturalized. I see it as my job to empathize with, hear, and to the
best of my ability guard the safety of those whom the classroom is not
designed to serve and whose safety is somehow not seen as a priority. 

If your focus is more on the fact that harm got named than it is on the harm itself, does this strike you as at all peculiar?

Just as Indigenous students and students of colour in my classes on
racism are somehow expected to be quietly, constantly unsafe and deeply
out of their comfort zones just to make sure the white students do not
experience a moment’s discomfort – and the white students actually think
everyone is having the same experience they are – if you make it hard
for people around you to let you know you have caused harm, you’re going
to invoke survival strategies in your friends and colleagues when you
think you’re just having a regular hangout with your friend.

This is the block to accountability that leads many of us to quietly
placate men in ways they take for granted and think are normal. With
certain men who have not owned that this guilt script is inside them,
this placating others do for them is so continuous and so normalized
that they seem to take as a given that women around them will handle
their emotions for them, and they don’t even see it happening. I have
recently understood that men I have to do this for are not actually men I
can trust. Because if they harm me, they expect me to remain silent
about the harm, and they expect me to remain silent about the fact of
remaining silent, so that they don’t have to feel bad, so that I don’t
feel scared of them. This is given as the normal state of affairs. When
you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Guilt is not empathy. Neither is shame.  In fact, when people feel overwhelmed by their own inner feelings of guilt,
they are more likely to attack the people around them rather than act
empathetic. Feeling guilt does not make you a good person.  Empathy and
responsiveness make you a good person. Guilt blocks empathy.

Empathy can trump guilt.

It looks like this:

Own. Apologize. Repair.

Say, “Here is what I did. I did this thing, and that thing, and this thing. They’re fucked up because …”

Imagine replacing guilt with curiosity. Imagine saying “wow, it is so
cool to recognize what I did. I’m excited I can hear you and grow. I
did this, I did that, here is why it is fucked up, I’m so excited to
learn how to come back into integrity with you, I’m so happy I can do
this, that it is ok to fuck up and say sorry and learn together. This
owning warms my heart.”

Own. Completely. Do not hide what you have done. Then ask “Have I got
you? Do I understand?” and let the person clarify. Mirror until you get
it. Give this the time that the person harmed feels is needed.

Say, “Wow, thank you for sharing that with me. I know how hard it can
be to share something like this, I’m really grateful you took that
risk, and I’m taking it to heart. Here is what I’m going to do (concrete
practical things) to make sure I get better about this in the future.”

When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Own, Apologize, Repair: Coming Back to Integrity