“I’m Sorry You Feel That Way but That Wasn’t My Intention:” How to Apologize with Cultural Humility

Abstract

When conversing about social justice issues, it is not a matter of if you make a mistake but when. This is because not only have we been socialized to adopt oppressive discourses and practices but also because social justice conversations continue to evolve to bring justice to those at society’s margins. The purpose of this paper is to provide practical guidelines for apologizing with cultural humility using transformative justice and research on effective apology components as guiding frameworks. Given that missteps are inevitable, it is important to engage in practices that support genuine efforts for continued reflection, learning, and reconciliation.

Keywords:

• cultural reflexivity
• social justice
• transformative justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.