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Truth requires naming the systems, institutions, and policies that produced the behavior.
Anything less is performance.
Avoid those who demand reconciliation without repair.
Avoid those who want you to pretend the harm wasn’t intentional.
Avoid those who mistake strategic retreat for growth.
Until the myth is rejected, not just the consequences of participating in it, there is no safety, no sincerity, and no liberation in these apologies.
So let’s be clear:
An apology without a full-throated repudiation of the myth that animated years of violent rhetoric, dehumanization, and intentional harm is not an apology.
It’s an act of self-preservation.
If you cannot name and denounce the ideology that shaped your actions, then you’re not ready for collective liberation. You’re only interested in saving yourself.
And that still makes you dangerous.
Just as dangerous are the people, especially white folx, who rush to embrace her “change,” or worse, pressure others to forgive her. That compulsion is not compassion. It’s another expression of the myth of white supremacy: the insistence that those harmed must accommodate the comfort, redemption arc, and image rehabilitation of the person who caused the harm.
Accountability requires transformation.
Transformation requires truth.
Truth requires naming the systems, institutions, and policies that produced the behavior.
Anything less is performance.
Avoid those who demand reconciliation without repair.
Avoid those who want you to pretend the harm wasn’t intentional.
Avoid those who mistake strategic retreat for growth.
Until the myth is rejected, not just the consequences of participating in it, there is no safety, no sincerity, and no liberation in these apologies.
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