Belated Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019 good wishes from SorryWatch!
Perhaps you’ve seen the video going around social media (and written about in Saturday’s New York Post and Daily News) depicting three white female students at Brooklyn’s elite Poly Prep Country Day School wearing blackface, jumping around giggling, and making monkey noises. (SorryWatch sees no need to share the video here. It is what it sounds like.) This is the second example of privileged white teens doing blackface in the news this week — hiya, Covington Catholic! — and it’s only Tuesday.
There’s a good opportunity for apology-pondering here.
Poly Prep’s Black Student affinity group, Umoja (the name refers to the Swahili word for unity) wrote a letter to the school community, published on Friday in the school newspaper and read aloud at the day’s Martin Luther King Jr. assembly. The apology-related requests made by the Umoja students are not only reasonable, but also a blueprint for how people who’ve done wrong should apologize.
The two letter-writers, both seniors, noted that the video wasn’t an isolated incident, but an indication of a larger problematic climate at Poly. Credence is lent to this notion by one response from Poly Prep leadership: “We do not tolerate racism or prejudice in our school or in our communities. We took immediate action as soon as we learned of a highly offensive video, taken years ago, being circulated on our campus.” (Nope. The incident happened two years ago, not waaaay back in the mists of time, the way the phrase “years ago” makes it sound. The two students who are still at the school were never actually disciplined. So this sure does sound as though racism and prejudice have been tolerated pretty well! Let’s see if bad publicity has any impact. The principal of Poly Prep has promised to meet with Umoja reps tomorrow.)
Please read the students’ letter here. We’ll come back to it.
Turning from Brooklyn westward, it seemed at first as though there might be a meaningful apology for the behavior of Covington Catholic students in Washington DC this weekend. (Just for the taunting of Native activist Nathan Phillips. Not for the blackface. Jeez, SorryWatch is so demanding.) On Sunday the school and diocese apologized in a joint statement to the media and in a pop-up message on the school web site. Which has since been taken down. Both the message and the web site (as of Tuesday). Here’s the statement for posterity (yay, shift-command-4):
Alas, in the wake of right-wing responses to the boys’ actions (they were PROVOKED by a loud and unpleasant member of a DIFFERENT minority group! they were only attempting to defuse tensions! they are victims! THE LIBERAL RUSH TO JUDGMENT!), the school issued a new statement to parents, this one without that unpleasant word “expulsion”:
The incident that took place at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. is being fully investigated by an independent third-party investigator. Based upon and following an investigation, we will be taking the appropriate action regarding this matter.
The statement goes on to ask that families report any threats to the police, and concludes, “Please continue to pray for our community.” School was closed today, what with people being desirous of screaming at the students and faculty. (Here’s a thought. Not to engage in “what-about-ism” and/or “both-sides-ism” or anything, but how about we all refrain from screaming and threatening?)
The boys insist that they did nothing wrong. The diocese issued another statement today: “This is a very serious matter that has already permanently altered the lives of many people,” it said. “It is important for us to gather the facts that will allow us to determine what corrective actions, if any, are appropriate.”
Here’s another thought, issued with not a ton of hopefulness: Both the Covington adults and the Poly Prep adults would do well to ponder the demands of the Poly Prep Umoja members. They are “only kids,” but their list shows that they understand what constitutes a meaningful apology. Here’s what they asked for:
— For the administration, faculty, and student body to view the situation as what it is: the most recent in a series of racist and intolerable acts that have alienated a large portion of Poly’s community rather than as an isolated event.
— For a public apology from the girls who participated in the video and the making thereof.
— For acknowledgment that the school has not taken steps to protect students of color in this latest episode
— For an email sent out to parents, students, and alumni clearly addressing the content of the video (specifying that it was blackface) as well as what steps are being taken to ensure that incidents like this do not happen again.
— For the implementation of a required civics/ethics/empathy course(s).
— For more faculty of color to help and support us.
— For a new section of the Poly Code of Conduct which specifically addresses hateful actions and hateful speech, whether it takes place on or off campus.
— For a greater emphasis and employment of our zero-tolerance policy.
— For equal repercussions for all students that violate policy and no statute of limitations for those violations.
Why is this list good? It ticks all of SorryWatch’s good-apology boxes: The words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize”; a statement of exactly what the apology is for (not “the incident” or “what was depicted in a video shared on social media”); an acknowledgment of the harm done; reparations; and a list of concrete steps that will be taken to ensure that similar problems won’t recur.
Fingers crossed — but not a lot of optimism felt — for teachable moments in Brooklyn, and in DC, and in Kentucky.
