I'm Sorry

- February 11, 2026

Have you ever felt shame that is not yours to feel? Right now, I know so many of us are carrying the shame that rightfully belongs to the President of the United States of America. Even though we aren't the ones who posted the vile and racist meme of Barack and Michelle Obama. And we aren't the ones saying we didn't read the whole post and didn't see what we posted. And we aren't the ones refusing to apologize to the former president, his family and all African Americans for the hateful image that we posted -- inadvertently or not.

Yes, I know we're all supposed to have moved on from this -- it happened five days ago, which makes it ancient history in the world of news. But some things are just too ugly to dismiss, too shameful to let go of. And from the reaction of millions of Americans, I know I'm not alone in this feeling -- wanting our black friends, neighbors, family members and people we've never met, to know how sorry we are.

We're sorry to have a president who either posted this intentionally or who can't be bothered to read what he posts. And we're so sorry to have a president who is unable to recognize and apologize for any pain he has inflicted.

"I didn't make a mistake," he said, after the post had been deleted.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Karolyn Leavitt, Trump's press secretary, called the stunned reaction to the post "fake outrage."

No, Ms. Leavitt, there was nothing fake about our outrage.

I'm not black, but I'm Jewish, and I know how it feels to see the old trope of the Jew with demon horns. It hurts in a particular way, because of the suffering and trauma inflicted on millions of Jews over the centuries. It's a sliver of pain I carry from the Spanish Inquisition, from the Russian Pogroms, from the Holocaust, and from the recent murders in synagogues in our country and other parts of the world. When my father told me he was called Jew Boy when he was a young man working in the post office in Cape Town, South Africa, some of his pain became mine too. And when I learned that my own children had been the targets of racial slurs and Nazi salutes in high school, the emotional shrapnel found a whole new place to lodge.

My point is that generational trauma is real. And racism and hate are alive and well in this country. We go about our lives, not thinking about the past, but it all comes back with each fresh incident of bigotry and hate. What makes this so much worse, it that it is often inflamed by our president, who has falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating their neighbors' cats and dogs, and who has referred to Minnesota's Somali community as "garbage."

The ape trope and the devil trope serve the same purpose: dehumanization. And we know where that leads.

Just as we must never forget the pain and suffering inflicted on Native Americans in this country, we must never forget that there was a time when it was legal for white people to own black people. To buy and sell them, like cattle. For this to happen, black people had to be considered less human than white people. They had to relinquish their names and take on the names of the people who owned them.

Growing up in South Africa during apartheid, we weren't taught about slavery in America in our schools. It was too close to what we were doing to the black majority in our own country -- treating them as less human than white people. We weren't the only country that had Whites Only drinking fountains as recently as the fifties and early sixties. Or where schools were segregated by race.

Here's the thing. I'm not the President of the United States of America, but when I post something I make sure I read the whole thing because I want it to reflect my values and beliefs. And if I screw up and include something that causes pain to others, I'll immediately apologize for the harm I've caused. Most of us would do the same.

And while I'm apologizing for something that I haven't done, I'm sorry that some of my friends are feeling the need to carry their passports with them when they go to the grocery store or visit their aging parents. These friends are American citizens, but they're frightened of being pulled over by ICE agents because of the color of their skin.

If all this is hard to understand, if you feel that too much is being made of the whole race thing, you probably haven't been on the receiving end of racism.

We all have biases and prejudices. I know I do. It's part of being human. But it's our responsibility to acknowledge them and make sure they don't cause us to hurt others. No matter what.