“Trust Me, I’m Sorry”: The Paradox of Public Apology

Abstract

This apology means nothing. After what they've done, why would we trust a word out of their lying mouths?How can we move forward when they won't even say they're sorry?INTRODUCTIONAn astute observer of public apologies will recognize the dissonance expressed in the two sentences above. Together, they demonstrate what we might call the paradox of public apology: namely, that even as we condemn (and outright mock) the public apologies issued by heads of states, politicians, as well as CEOs of corporations and other NGOs, public demand for such apologies continues to arise with predictable regularity each time a public figure or institution is found guilty of wrongdoing, negligence, or failure.1 We seem to insist on this ritual even as we indict it as just that- mere ritual. Why is this? Why demand something that is increasingly devalued and dismissed? If official apologies are little more than political theater, why does the public appetite for this performance remain so insatiable?In this paper, I draw out a significant, shared element motivating both the dismissal and the appetite for contemporary public apology: trust. I propose that the significance of public trust goes a long way to explaining the paradox of apologies. While apologies have multiple functions, each function aims, in part, to restore conditions of warranted trust following wrongdoing (Koehn 2013). In typical cases of interpersonal apology, often taken to be the model for public apologies, the relationship between apology and trust becomes a question of measuring trustworthiness; a successful apology persuades the recipient that the speaker2 is now more trustworthy than she once was, or is at least sincerely trying to become more trustworthy. A good apology gives the victim new reasons to trust the apologizer. In taking the expressive significance of apology seriously, we might even say that much of the merit of the apology stands in, as a kind of proxy, for the merit of the apologizer. Valuable apologies are trustworthy apologies, and trustworthy apologies reveal trustworthy apologizers.In the case of public apologies, the connection between expression and motive is murkier, for a host of reasons. It is harder to use an official apology as a reliable measure for the trustworthiness of the speaker or, indeed, of the institution that she represents. Much of the blanket criticism aimed at public apologies emerges, I suspect, out of a sense of vulnerability and indignation-a suspicion that we are being asked and even expected to trust someone who has not yet earned it. Yet, if this is so, why does public appetite for apology remain insatiable? The answer, I believe, lies with the object of apology-the wrong which is being apologized for.Some state and institutional apologies are issued for historic wrongs: incidents and abuses in the distant (and not so distant) past for which acknowledgement has never been given and redress never made: examples range from the Irish Potato Famine (UK) to the Chinese Head Tax (Canada) and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment (US). Here, the demand for apology seems less surprising, since ongoing silence and lack of recognition are enduring, painful wrongs-spanning decades and even centuries. Official apologies alter distorted and oppressive histories. They set the record straight by correcting official accounts and acknowledging groups of citizens whose existence was denied or near-eradicated (Gibney and Roxstrom 2001; Nobles 2008; MacLachlan 2010). They represent and even enact important public moral change by asserting the wrongness of past norms and policies (for example, racist immigration practices or genocidal colonialism) that were once considered acceptable or even morally appropriate, and they announce and assert the very real harms these wrongful policies caused. Apology may not be all that victims of past wrongs and their descendants want, but it is less puzzling that apologies are often part of the reparation they demand (Torpey 2001; Walker 2013). …