The Dirty Business of an Apology
Every time some corporation gets caught in an earth-shattering crisis that damages people’s lives, someone on payroll issues an apology. Then, an apology for the apology. Then, an explanation of the apology. Sometimes, you see a thread of self-victimization running through the apologies. If the incompetence is truly stunning, you will read a denial, blame, self-victimization, and an apology simultaneously; that’s the camel, a horse designed by a committee.
There’s a press release, or a series of them, a screenshot or carefully scripted, highly produced video posted to instagram, with enough symbols working on your unconscious to be worthy of a graduate-level communication’s course assignment, a prepared-by-legal counsel beforehand interview with a major media outlet, maybe a tearful close-up if they’re really trying to sell it. If it is an organization, the organization will go through the motions of firing people, many receiving large severance checks or payouts; there will be a shell game of renaming departments, or the temporary creation of a department to convince the public change is underway. If the apology is from a person, you will see them disappear for a minute, return with a book tour, and a seat on a board, as a way of entering public life again.
We want an apology, so we eat this cycle like Halloween candy. Manufactured contrition, sought and digested in public. We tell ourselves it means something, that it restores trust. That it’s good for the culture. That we’re better off when people apologize.
We’re not.
These apologies aren’t real.
They’re strategy.
Business told us these apologies were good for culture. We believed them.
I worked for an organization that should have a professional award for apologizing. Do what it wants, then deal with the fall-out, if it comes. Psst: It always comes. Nonetheless, the apology is a carefully crafted strategy to protect the bottom line as much as it can, while it goes about with the bad behavior like a teenager who doesn’t understand consequences. Except it does understand consequences; it’s calculated into the business model.
We’ve Mistaken Performance for Accountability
We live in a culture obsessed with image control. Public apology has become part of that machinery. It’s no longer a moral reckoning. It’s a reputational tool. You don’t have to be sorry, you just have to look sorry long enough to make the headlines fade.
Apologies, when they show up in politics, media, and high-status institutions, are rarely about the harmed. They’re about the harmer. They’re about damage control, legal shielding, or PR optics. We’ve created a whole genre of public speech that simulates responsibility without ever requiring it.
If you don’t believe me, watch what happens next time someone in power apologizes for themselves or on behalf of an organization. Look at who they’re really speaking to and trying to rally. It’s rarely the person or group they harmed. It’s the institution that can protect them. It’s their investors or donors. Their voters. Their bosses. Their faculty. Their tuition-paying parents.
The target of the apology is symbolic. The real audience is structural.
The Anatomy of a Non-Apology
There are patterns to the way people lie while pretending to atone. Once you know them, you can spot them a mile away.
• I’m sorry you feel that way.
Translation: I don’t believe I did anything wrong. It is you who is at fault for thinking I did harm you. But I will say something so you stop bothering me.
• That was not my intention.
Translation: I did the conduct. But, I will deny that the conduct could have caused the harm because I didn’t intend at the outset to cause the harm. I was focused on myself and my needs, instead of how sating those would impact others. So, I’ll focus on my intent to try to distract from my impact.
• I’ve grown so much from this experience.
Translation: I will apologize for nothing, I will skip over accountability, and I will be cagey, as I learned a lot about you from this experience. While I am disguising my side-eye, I will lead you to focus on redemption, like it were the off-ramps to nowhere on Storrow Drive, in Boston, Massachusetts.
• This doesn’t reflect who I am.
Translation: I did the conduct. I know it hurt you. But, I’d like to separate my actions from my identity so I can still be seen as a good person.
These are not apologies. These are exit strategies. They are attempts to salvage image, while leaving the harm intact. That is how little people in authority care about others
We let people get away with this abusive behavior because we have confused confession with change. We are so desperate for any sign of moral leadership that we will settle for the performance of remorse instead of the practice of repair.
The Legal Engineering of Public Apology
You want to know who hates real apologies? Lawyers. Lawyers hate apologies.
I say that as someone who is a recovering lawyer of over two decades. I know how this works. The second an institution or public figure faces legal exposure, the crisis response team kicks in and the very first thing said is: Do not admit fault. Don’t speak off-script. Don’t improvise. Don’t even look like you’re taking responsibility.
Meanwhile, the wrong-doer is often coached to say something publicly. Why? Because silence looks worse. The printers warm up, the social media accounts are used, and you receive a crafted, rehearsed statement that signals “concern” or “regret” without admitting wrongdoing.
It’s a delicate dance. You acknowledge feelings without acknowledging fact. You express empathy without accountability. You give the public enough to believe you’ve done the work, even though nothing with impact will change behind the curtain. The names may change, the organizational structure may change, but the values don’t change. Case-in-point, though the organization I worked for was caught for horrific conduct, and though a fancy brochure containing a detailed and brightly colored ethics policy was created, distributed, and announced, we were told it was not being enforced. I verified it in writing.
The law doesn’t care if you’re sorry. It cares if you’re liable. It cares if it looks like you have the right infrastructure surrounding you to dull the force of a legal challenge. The systems that surround power are built to shield it from consequence, not to protect people, not to help individuals at risk, but to shepherd the organization through humility.
Why We’re So Addicted to the Script
We keep rewarding fake apologies because we want to believe that power can be self-correcting. First, we are led to believe that these people in power are smarter. They aren’t. They are wealthier. They are better connected. They were in the right place at the right time. They looked the part. They kissed the right ass.
Then, we desperately want to believe these humans are human and can perceive, understand and respect the human condition. They cannot. That someone who causes harm will stop, will learn, will do better. They won’t. Not if they can get away with it.
You know who taught us that? Power.
Power taught us that a well-worded “I’m sorry” is enough. That healing is irrelevant. That redemption is a rebrand. We bought it because we’re exhausted, and because holding people truly accountable takes more than a social media cycle. It takes courage. Organization. Consistency. It takes hiring a lawyer and forcing whomever or whatever it is to reckon with the consequences of actions, even if its in a gerrymandered system like arbitration.
Some people are so overwhelmed they will say, “They apologized. Let’s move on.”
To some, moving on feels like closure, even when it’s not.
Real closure doesn’t come from statements. It comes from structural change.
That’s what public apology often tries to prevent.
What Real Apology Requires
A real apology costs something. For the person who is harmed, when the harm is mental or physical and significant, it requires adequate financial compensation. That compensation is not akin to nuisance value, however. You’d be surprised what nuisance value looks like to some of these organizations. For some it’s $200,000.
Any cost interrupts power. Even it is hidden from the public, though it shouldn’t be. If you want to change behavior, consequences are required. Consequences center the person harmed, not the person performing the bad conduct. It’s not about your waiver. It’s about changed behavior. It opens a door to repair. For an organization that has not one single feeling, because there will never be an admission of responsibility, there will never be an impact on the operation of the organization, and there will often not be an open door, financial cost has to be significant enough that the victim feels the organization “got it.” If it isn’t painful enough, then it isn’t a consequence. It is the cost of doing business.
You want to know what an actual apology looks like? It sounds like this:
• I was wrong.
• I caused harm.
• Here’s how I’m making it right.
• I don’t expect forgiveness.
• I will accept the consequences.
No PR team. No pivot to victimhood. No passive language. Facts, acceptance of responsibility, and acknowledging the harm done, not the victim’s perception of the harm done.
You’ll notice, when someone does follow this framework, we don’t always know what to do with it. We’re not used to seeing it. We’re used to curated regret and profitable pain. We’re used to apology as content. We are not used to apology as a reckoning.
Apologies Without Action Are Just PR
Let’s talk about the institutions that issue statements after a scandal.
The university that says it “stands with survivors”, while retaining the fixers, and keeping the people responsible for the conduct in their jobs, on payroll, as long as it is necessary to keep those people under the control of the organization through litigation, then the tortfeasors slip out the backdoor, without even an announcement.
The company that claims to embrace equality, while underpaying its Black employees and calling HR to can them the second one of them complains.
The police department that apologizes “for how this was handled” while doubling down on internal protections that prevent accountability.
Apology, without transparency, without disruption of harm, without policy changes, frankly, without a firehose cleaning from top to bottom, is manipulation. It’s a way to end a conversation before anyone with power gets uncomfortable. You, however, will endure all the discomfort you can’t bear.
Sometimes, it’s not even that subtle. Sometimes, the people who apologize the loudest are the ones least interested in changing anything. They want the apology to be the repair. But it’s not. It’s just the invoice. If you don’t pay it with action, it’s worthless.
Why We Crave Apologies Anyway
Let me say something hard.
We want apologies from power because we are starving for moral alignment. We want to believe that harm can be named and met with humility. We want the people who hurt us to say our names and to admit to the conduct and acknowledge what was taken from us. In the workplace, so much is taken from us when we are harmed.
When they don’t exhibit moral alignment, it confirms what we already fear: that no one is coming to make it right. That’s why we cling to these half-measures. These headlines. These PR stunts. We try to make them enough. We project integrity onto the people performing it. Because to face the full emptiness of it is too painful.
We trick ourselves into thinking it means something. We make meaning out of scraps. We say, “At least they said something,” like that’s progress. Real progress and real justice doesn’t begin with the microphone. It begins with consequence.
I Don’t Want Your Sorry. I Want Your Exit.
There were people in my life who have never apologized. I never waited for it. It wasn’t coming and it won’t come. As a lawyer, I knew to never expect it to come. Some people will never say sorry because they know that apology isn’t just words; an apology is an invitation to accountability. They don’t want to be held accountable. To be held accountable signifies they did something wrong, and they, to keep hegemony in place, do not want to own they harmed others as profoundly as they did. They want to keep the image of themselves as “a good person” or it a “good organization” while leaving the damage behind to figure out how to survive.
Some people are brave enough to enforce accountability, but even that is a farce; organizations are adopting arbitration agreements that place the dispute in a private company, they pay money to, and that decide the issue for them, instead of a Court with a jury of peers and in full view of the community, where reporters can listen. Any organization that chooses arbitration has zero interest in accountability. It doesn’t matter what they say or what they do. If that organization uses arbitration, they are anti-accountability. I challenge any organization to debate me on that. Accountability was the entire point of the court system. Public judgment and knowledge of bad behavior changes bad behavior prospectively when held accountable.
Arbitration, behind closed doors, paid for by the organization, is a process that is not designed for accountability; it is designed to hide accountability. That’s not justice.
So no, I don’t want your carefully-worded statement.
I want your public resignation in disgrace.
I want your funding pulled.
I want the policies changed.
I want your platform gone.
I want the people you harmed to be believed, compensated, and protected.
That’s what repair looks like.
Everything else is looks like you saving your own asses, and it sounds and smells like loud out-of-tune, symphonic sulfuric flatulence, those big, bulbous, wet farts.
The Rest of Us Are Taught to Beg for Forgiveness
Let’s talk about the double standard.
Those of us with less power are taught to apologize constantly. For our tone. (There’s nothing wrong with your tone.) For doing the right thing. (Jesus, do the right thing.) For taking up space. (Spread every limb and take up as much space as you can.) For existing. (You have a right to exist as you are.) For the discomfort morality and facts cause. (That’s not a you problem.) We’re trained to shrink, to smooth, to over explain, rather than just say it succinctly, because we fear more harm will come our way if we don’t justify our thoughts. To those people that conditioned us to feel like we are worth so little:
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
Meanwhile, people with power try to use their power, the same power that they used to harm you with, to rewrite the story. They get to perform one tearful moment and go back to their life unchanged.
Here’s what I’ve learned from whistleblowing, from being punished, for years, for telling the truth, from sitting across from people who harmed me and others and, who, in their delusions of self-importance, still expected my support: real apology is rare because it requires giving something up.
Power does not like to give anything up unless it’s forced to give it up.
It is time to force it, and to use every tool at your disposal to do it.
FEED YOUR SOUL:
Smoked Salt Dark Chocolate Tart
Apologies should be like this tart: bold, unflinching, and just the right amount of bitter. The smoked salt cuts through the richness, the way truth should cut through performance. It’s unapologetically intense. it doesn’t care if it makes you uncomfortable.
Ingredients:
• 1 1/4 cups chocolate cookie crumbs
• 5 tbsp melted butter
• 1/2 tsp smoked sea salt
• 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
• 8 oz dark chocolate (70–75%), chopped
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Flaky smoked salt for garnish
Instructions:
1. Mix cookie crumbs, butter, and salt. Press into a tart pan. Bake at 350°F for 10 minutes. Cool.
2. Heat cream until just boiling. Pour over chocolate. Let sit 2 minutes. Stir until smooth.
3. Add vanilla. Pour into cooled crust. Chill for 2 hours minimum.
4. Garnish with smoked salt before serving.
Here’s the bottom line. If an apology doesn’t cost you something, it’s not real. If it protects your power more than it protects the people you harmed, it’s not repair. You don’t get to rebrand your integrity like a logo and hope we forget. We remember. And some of us keep receipts, not because we’re vindictive, but because the world doesn’t change unless someone refuses to move on. We don’t want your PR statement. We want justice. We want consequence. We want the whole damn thing dismantled and rebuilt. Until then, you can keep your “sorry”. You’re going to need it when we are done with you.
With gratitude for your support,
Dr. Tracy A. Pearson, J.D. is a legal, political and cultural analyst, writer, host, and and researcher, who appears weekly as a Contributor on the SiriusXM network, SiriusXM Progress Channel 127, on John Fugelsang’s Tell Me Everything.
She is an expert in implicit bias, investigations, corruption, abuse of power, and law, and she appears on various networks explaining complex issues in simple ways. You have seen her on NewsNation, Cheddar News, Fox5DC, NOWLIVE from Fox, KNX LA, Los Angeles’ longest operating talk radio station, and other ABC, NBC and CBS stations.
Dr. Pearson is currently writing a book based on the first study on implicit bias in workplace investigations and which is cited in the California Labor and Employment Law Review and Capital & Class (Sage Journals)
She is the host and Executive Produce of the podcast What We Don’t Know with Dr. Tracy available on Apple Podcasts, Patreon, and with free samples anywhere you find your favorite podcast.
Follow her everywhere good @TracyExplains on BlueSky, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more. She is proudly no longer a Twitter/X user.
What Matters by Dr. Tracy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please become a paid subscriber.
A portion of your paid subscription is donated automatically to fight climate change through the Stripe Climate program.
A portion of your paid subscription is donated to a rotating list of non-profit organizations, fighting for democracy.
If you feel like you don’t know what to do, please help me fight the destruction of our world by being a paid subscriber.