Skip the apologies, please

So, I'm doing my normal run-through of today's news. I see an article about James Watson, the scientist who, a few days ago, said that Africans were less intelligent than [us]:
Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted Watson as saying that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."

I do wonder who "ours" stands for. Is it Europeans? The British? Americans? People who descended from apes? I'm not sure.

I chose not to read the whole article yesterday when I saw it because I figured there was no reason to needlessly get pissed off about something.

Today, though, I ran into an article about him being suspended from his work. But the thing that made me laugh was his "apology":
"I am mortified about what has happened," Watson said. "More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said."

Ok, let me break this down into two parts. I'm going to start with the most amusing:

1. He's mortified. He can't understand how he could have said what he was quoted as saying? So is he saying he never said that? That he was misquoted? That he's senile?

If you pay attention to what he said, you'll notice he clearly didn't apologize, nor did he recant what he said. He didn't say he was sorry (he said he was mortified). Didn't say that what he said was wrong (instead, he couldn't understand how he could have said so-and-so). Oh, he's a smart one, all right. His statement, the words he chose, were clearly intentional, and quite clever.

Nonetheless, it was an attempt to fake an apology. Which leads me to the second point:

2. Just skip the apology. It blows my mind how frequently this happens. Someone makes a statement, someone else gets pissed, then the first person apologizes. The first person isn't sorry. He (for the sake of this post, the person will be a male) might be sorry that it created such a fuss. He might be sorry that he got in trouble. But he's not sorry for saying or doing what he said/did. The first thing he said was how he really felt. The apology was to placate people.

It reminds me of being younger: girls, as you might know, can be quite passive aggressive (but to get into that is a completely different post). Nonetheless, I'd see girls make a comment, such as, "You're ugly - just kidding." The just kidding might be accompanied with a sweet smile, a slight tap on the arm, a joking eye roll. But usually the person wasn't "just kidding". The girl just wanted to tell the other person what she thought, but follow the accepted social unspoken social rules.

Similar to when someone makes apologies such as these. I'm tired of apologies. Feel the way you feel. Think the way you think. Believe what you believe. Say what you say. But skip the bullshit apologies afterward. It doesn't make it better. It just makes the person look ridiculous.

Watson, believe what you believe. You have every right to (it's a bunch of bullshit, but you still have that right). But save the apology for something that you really feel sorry about.

Had Watson, when questioned about the quote, flipped off the journalist and said, "Fuck 'em," I would've respected him more. At least he said what he felt. But the half-ass apology just... it's pansy-ish.

I think if people stopped saying what they believed and then apologized for it, maybe we'd be able to have better dialogue. Granted, if people were coming from places of hate, it wouldn't lead to better communication. But when people can be honest in love - or at least, in respect - doesn't it make it better. If I could sit down and talk to someone who I felt racism toward, or someone who felt racism toward me talked to me, and we weren't talking to put the other person down but instead to have a true, open conversation about our beliefs, can't that spawn something beautiful?

How can we solve anything if we pretend it's not there? How can we work on something when we pretend we didn't mean what we first said?

Idealistic? Or could it have some truth in it?