Divya Ramesh | Empty apologies

Have you ever felt an apology wasn’t enough?

Recently, as I was talking to my cousin who lives in Australia, she mentioned that last Thursday, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard apologized to an audience of over 800 mothers and received a standing ovation.

After I got off the phone, I hopped online and pulled up a BBC article about the speech. Gillard had addressed her regret that for decades after the 1950s, thousands of unwed Australian mothers were coerced, deceived, drugged and threatened into giving their children up for adoption.

I don’t tend to follow Australian politics religiously, but reading the transcript of Gillard’s speech made me feel a sense of deja vu.

Gillard spoke of “a nation searching its conscience,” while condemning national actions that left a “legacy of pain and suffering.” She sympathized with abandoned infants who were unable to feel the warmth of a mother’s skin.

However, as I cut away the trappings of heart-wrenching metaphors from the contrite speech, I felt that Gillard’s apology to the Australian people played the audience’s emotions as a singer would play the scales in the Sydney Opera House.

In essence, Gillard said that Australia had wrenched children away from unwilling mothers many decades ago, and she’s sorry.

Her apology was supposed to suffice, supposed to provide sufficient recompense for any injury. Western cultures use apologies to bandage wounds of all sizes. I broke your scooter. Sorry. I ruined your new red sweater by making it into a Superman cape. Sorry.

Sorry has become the panacea, but the word is caving under the weight of our demands. According to a study done in Britain, Brits apologize 2,920 times a year and 233,600 times in a lifetime. I suspect people in other countries do so almost as often.

Given that, it should come as no surprise that Dutch psychologist David De Cremer found that we expect an apology but “overvalue the effect of receiving one.” In many cases, the actual experience of hearing “I’m sorry” is never as good as the perceived or imagined one.

Part of the reason for this is that the simple apology that suffices for a broken scooter or a torn red sweater cannot fully mend relationships between a government and its people. Yet, somehow, it has been forced to bear the weight of that role throughout history. Gillard’s words aren’t unlike Reagan’s apology to the Japanese Americans in 1988, California governor Gray Davis’ apology to victims of forced sterilization in 2003 or the Defense Appropriations Act’s apologetic provision to Native Americans in 2010.

We displaced your home, doubted your fidelity and sent you to live in deplorable conditions. We’re sorry. We labeled you as mentally ill and forced not-particularly-safe sterilization methods on you. We’re sorry. We encroached upon your land and killed you with superior weaponry when you retaliated. Now, as compensation — you guessed it — we’re sorry.

Sorry has become almost meaningless because of overuse. As history has shown us, governments apologize for rash actions and continue to commit more mistakes. Social icons routinely apologize for steroid and drug use but fall into old ways.

But on another note, the phrase “I’m sorry” has also lost meaning and effectiveness because it doesn’t translate between cultures in our globalizing world. According to a study published in Harvard Business Review, group-based Eastern cultures view culpability in a different light than do individualized Western cultures and therefore feel differently towards apologies.

For example, the study notes, “Americans were unmoved by Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda’s effusive apologies in 2010, after widespread reports of malfunctioning Prius accelerators.” Just saying sorry didn’t translate the feeling of remorse and mended nothing in this situation.

I am not saying that we should stop apologizing all together. Being able to genuinely say sorry is a social skill and a pillar of common courtesy. We feel accountable when we apologize and more willing to forgive when someone directs an apology at us. Saying sorry acknowledges that a line was crossed and begins to excuse the person or group that made the mistake. But, “I’m sorry” is only the first step. When governments and celebrities apologize for closure, it’s exasperating.

I’m sorry, but it’s not enough.

Divya Ramesh is a College freshman from Princeton Junction, N.J. Her email address is divyaramesh20@gmail.com. You can follow her @DivyaRamesh11. “Through My Eyes” appears every Monday.

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