© Getty Images / Jason Armond / Los Angeles TimesJacob Frey, Mayor of Minneapolis takes at knee George Floyd's memorial service on Thursday, June 4, 2020 in Minneapolis , Minnesota
No sooner did Jacob Frey, the Mayor of Minneapolis, apologize to the black community for the killing of George Floyd than everyone felt they had to say sorry for the sins of their fathers, erasing the meaning of sincere apology.
I've stopped counting the number of apologies issued by public figures, business institutions and celebrities in recent weeks. It's sometimes difficult to avoid the conclusion that
a public apology has become a public-relations exercise. Why else would the Greene King pub chain and Lloyd's of London apologize for the links to the slave trade - a historical event that occurred centuries ago?
Moral cowardice and the easy way outMoral cowardice is another of the driving forces fueling the proliferation of public apologies.
Apology has become weaponized to the point that very few politicians possess the strength of character to stand by their words. I remember when, last November, the Mayor of Middlesbrough, Andy Preston, apologized 'unreservedly' to the mental-health charity Mind for calling a Facebook commenter a '
nutter'. There's something truly scary about a world in which people wish to censor others for using a word the vast majority of human beings find unobjectionable. But what is even more chilling is that the mayor felt obliged to grovel and apologize.
Comment: The reason people are protesting in peaceful, small American towns is because collective guilt based on manufactured systematic racism is now a thing. These are normal everyday Americans who are just trying to live their lives. Collectively shaming them for grievances that aren't even wrong is naturally seen as a bizarre provocation. And when a few respond in turn, the agitators signal how right they are. It's a dark and backwards mess.