Listen to thisEvery now and then, I listen to a Child and Youth Care practitioner talk about their day at work, whether that be in a residential program, a school, or a recreation centre. And surprisingly often, that day involves dealing with a young person who has done something to upset other young people, was removed from the group of young people they upset, and then allowed to re-enter that group under the condition that they say ‘sorry’. This part of the story is usually told almost casually, in passing, as if it were the most obvious thing and not in need of contemplation at all. Instead, the story centers around what happened before the young person was removed, and how things continued after the young person re-joined the group. And yet, I would suggest that the most interesting part of the story is this phenomenon that we often make young people apologize for their misdeeds before allowing them to be with other young people. Far from trivial or obvious, I think this is a rather important moment, and not one that speaks particularly well of relational practices, anti-oppressive practices, or, for that matter, youth-centered practices. So, this month, I want to encourage us to think about all the things that go into forcing a young person to say sorry before being able to re-join the group.
The first thing that happens is that we eliminate a million ways in which a young person might think about whatever it is they did to upset others. By reducing the possibilities to saying sorry, we eliminate, for example, the young person’s view that what they did was the right thing to do in the context of either what was happening in the group at the time, or in the context of what the young person felt they needed to do in order assert their self-worth, their identity, or their way of being in the world. Asking young people to say sorry means that we are not asking them to explain their thinking; in fact, it means that we encourage not thinking about where the original behaviour or actions came from, and instead to undo those actions by simply saying sorry.
The second thing that happens is that the process of negotiating re-entry into the group becomes a binary power play. We demand a very specific product (saying sorry), and we impose this demand on the young person regardless of how the young person makes sense of it. For the group of young people who will receive the ‘sorry’, the message is not that the offending young person is sorry, but that they have been sufficiently disempowered by the child and youth workers to submit to their demand to say sorry. What the other youth see is a peer who has been stripped of their autonomy. This may well be satisfying for a moment of time, but beyond that moment, it is a message to all the young people that when the time is right, anyone can be stripped of their autonomy and made to do whatever is demanded by those in charge.
The third thing that happens is that we demonstrate a lack of commitment to the concept of truth and reconciliation. While we use these terms mostly in the context of healing from large-scale social oppressions, such as the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States, or apartheid in South Africa, the concept of truth and reconciliation is at the heart of virtually all conflict resolution and subsequent healing processes, even at much smaller scales of group conflict in the context of a residential program or a classroom. Fundamentally, the concept demands that there be truth about what happened, why it happened, and whose benefits whatever happened served, and that there then be strategies, commitments, and resolutions to move forward in a different way that integrates the injustice of the past into the construction of a future with equitable power and privilege sharing. Saying sorry obscures the truth. In fact, saying sorry suggests that whatever was done wrong was not really meant to be done wrong and therefore we regret doing it wrong. This is almost never the truth. Far more likely is that whatever was done wrong was meant to be done wrong because it served purpose and created real or perceived benefits for the wrong doer, and sometimes, even usually, for others in the group who simply were not identified as benefactors of the wrongdoing. For example, when a young person yells out racist phrases at the group, that young person is removed from the group and can’t re-enter the group until they say sorry to the group. But it wasn’t just the offending young person who benefitted from yelling the racist phrases at the group. Their act reinforced the power of the dominant racial group and perpetuated white supremacy, so that even young people who may not have participated in yelling out such phrases benefit from this having happened. Instead of taking up the complex ways in which wrongdoing impacts on social contexts, we obscure this truth by individualizing the issue and undoing it using that simple phrase of total disempowerment – I am sorry. Without truth, there can be no reconciliation.
The fourth and final thing I want to expose this month is that saying sorry doesn’t only raise the question of whether one actually is sorry. It also raises the question as to whether one ought to be sorry for having upset others. I think about this in two different ways. First, what exactly is the offending young person sorry for? Are they sorry that they allowed themselves to be impulsive, perhaps rude, socially awkward, or otherwise imperfect in their behaviour? Are these not the very reasons they are likely in this program in the first place? Are they essentially apologizing for being who they are and how they are? One might replace the sorry with this:
“Forgive me for presenting myself as I am and as every psychological report, behaviour assessment, intake screening and professional opinion has agreed reflect the outcomes of my circumstances; from now on, I will pretend to be different, negate my history, identity and circumstances, and conform to whatever expectations you may have of me to meet the normative requirements of human interactions you have imposed here”.
Second, there have been many occasions where I have observed challenging behaviours on the part of young people that were provoked by the actions of the staff in the setting, or by the inaccessibility of the environment, or by the lack of customization of some performance demand placed on the young person. In those instances, I am not really sure that the behaviour of the young person is the problem. It may, quite to the contrary, be entirely justified and appropriate given the circumstances. Who should be saying sorry in these instances? The young person for their behaviour, or the professionals for failing to meet the needs of the young person at that moment in time?
My point is that making young people say they are sorry before allowing them to rejoin the group is a loaded process. There is much more going on here than simply resolving tension and getting the day or the shift back on track. Perhaps most importantly, we lose so much opportunity for group learning in this process by essentially imposing the resolution of the issue entirely onto the young person identified as the offender. Sometimes, saying sorry actually perpetuates significant injustice and serves the benefit of those whose wrongdoing is much more sinister than a simple behaviour deemed inappropriate. I think a much better way of dealing with these kinds of circumstances is to engage the rich and generally very useful ideas embedded in restorative practices, which are not based on the demand for remorse but instead focus on community healing, with accountability spread across the community rather than in truth-negating gesture of saying sorry. I know all of this seems like I am making a simple issue rather complicated. So, sorry about that …
