Phenomenology of Racism II: The Paradox of the Power of an Apology

‘You have to remember that white people are afraid of Black people because we are scared that you are going to come and kill us all.’

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The problem with a statement like the one posited above, the kind of statement that many of us racialised others has heard from time immemorial, is that it speaks not only of the fear that the abusers of power have should they have to give up their power, but also of their inability to recognise that black others, that racialised others, more often than not just want to be left alone to live their lives.  The drive for retribution, the idea that should the abusers give up their weapons of oppression so that the racialised other might come for them, is in many ways a myth designed to also deny their own shame at what they have been complicit within. 

What I find most interesting in this example, is that pity is used here as a form of racial manipulation to make the other, the victim of the hate, then put down their own sadness, ire, or whatever else, and then take up the care of their abuser.  There is a gaslighting aspect to this statement.  An aspect which then has me asking questions such as; Why say it?  Why say it to me? What are you really trying to say to me when you deliver such a statement?  Questions which take me away from sitting with my own feelings, whatever these may be, towards those who also in their utterance of such a statement are actually, unconsciously, uttering their complicity with racialised systems of oppression.

This months blog, which builds out of some of the ideas presented in my current book, speaks to not only the importance of an apology, but to how this is also often used as a weapon of oppression against the other (Turner, 2025).

‘Didn’t I read somewhere that David Cameron went to Jamaica, promised them £30 million to build a new prison, and denied them reparations, saying they needed to just get over slavery.’

Unknown

‘Get over it!’  How many times have those of us who have spoken up about racism been told that this is what we must do.  That we have to stop talking about race, racism, etc.  That times have passed and we now live in a multi-cultural country and race and racism are not an issue anymore.

What I love about this last one, especially given the prevalence of St George’s flags which criss-crossed lampposts up and down the country over the summer, is just how the silencing of narratives around race from the ‘get over it brigade,’ doesn’t actually equate to their own sense of anti-racialised-other hatred.

Yet, the main issue I have with Cameron’s refusal to apologise for slavery is about more than just the denial of any reparations due, even though his own family benefitted from financial reparations paid by the British working class on the whole for over a hundred years (dear reader, please do go and look this up) (Riley-Smith, 2015).  The psychological issue is one of a lack of humility.

Humility here, to recognise the work of Fisher-Borne and their team, involves the taking up of accountability for the actions of one group over the other (Fisher-Borne et al., 2015).  This is why the lack of accountability by the British Government, the lack of an apology, is actually just as racist, and supremacist, as some of the actions enacted over all these years.  There is a denial of any accountability for the actions against the racialised of the other.  A denial of the impact of the collection of historical actions which led to the destitution of the racialised other.  There is a denial of the humanity of the racialised other. 

An apology is about more than saying sorry.  It is a redressing of the power imbalance which led to such abuses in the first place. 

‘I need you to understand why I did what I did (to you).’

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So many of us have heard a phrase like that uttered above.  For myself, it was something used by my ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend, and a former colleague, to name but three times I have heard this used (he said rolling his eyes).  On all occasions, and if you are a minority, you will understand this, there was the attempt by the abusive person to turn the situation around so they got some sympathy from myself.  At no time though was there any approach towards offering me an apology for the oftentimes horrible things done to myself by each of them.

If I take the humility argument a stage further, what an apology here also means is that it rehumanises the person abused by the hatred of that person.  An apology not only means the one with individual, or systemic, power steps down from their pedestal.  It also involves the raising up, or the re-injection of power into the racialised other.  The lack of an apology is an act of supremacy ultimately and therefore maintains the racialised power imbalance which it established in the first place.

In my therapy recently, I was exploring the idea of power versus authority (and here I in no way mean authoritarianism, which is a different thing for another time).  Power as presented here, often equates to the power over the other, as Proctor (2017) for example explores in so much of their interesting writing.  Power over the other, the racialised other, and as a facet of racism, dictates and underlines the structures of supremacy which will help the subject to maintain its pseudo-structured position at the pinnacle.  It is enforced from the outside down upon the other. 

This is different to authority, where a person radiates a certain power but they do not feel the need to have power over the other.  There is no denial of the humanity of the other.  There is a humility.  There is the ability to get things wrong, and to admit when they are wrong.  There is no sense of shame in this either.  Authority is a dance with humility as well, a poorly worn cloak that one has to wear in service.  Not a Saville Row suit that one chooses to wear to show off. 

Those with authority are not as interested in power and have the ability to apologise, I realise.  And in this ability, they empower and bring so many others alongside with them.

This is the power of an apology.

References

Fisher-Borne, M., Cain, J. M., & Martin, S. L. (2015). From Mastery to Accountability: Cultural Humility as an Alternative to Cultural Competence. Social Work Education, 34(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2014.977244

Proctor, G. (2017). The dynamics of power in counselling and psychotherapy: ethics, politics and practice (2nd ed.). PCCS Books Ltd.

Riley-Smith, B. (2015, September). David Cameron told to “personally atone for slavery” as reparations row mars Jamaican visit. The Telegraph2, 1–2.

Turner, D. (2025). A Phenomenology of Racism in Counselling and Psychotherapy. Routledge.