I need to make some apologies after my article in the Alley last month. The article praised Ventura Village, but when I wrote the article I forgot that the Alley serves many neighborhoods, not just Ventura Village. The Alley staff recognized the problem, but because I submitted my article so close to the deadline, they didn’t have time to replace it. I didn’t mean to snub other other neighborhoods of south Minneapolis, but I didn’t pay enough attention to who the Alley’s audience is.
Having said that, I do appreciate quite a bit about the neighborhoods around Ventura Village. I actually mentioned the American Swedish Institute in my original article, forgetting that ASI lies south of Ventura Village. I think there is a lot in South Minneapolis to be proud of.
In case you’re wondering if I was told to apologize for last month’s article, I wasn’t. I learned long ago that apologizing is the best way of dealing with situations like this. For one thing, my mistake was pretty public, and it is in black and white for all to see. There’s no room to say, “That’s not what I meant” or some other defense. When I was younger, I would have stubbornly argued that I did nothing wrong. Back then, I thought that admitting wrong would make people think less of me. Fortunately, I’ve learned that most people are more accepting of those who admit their mistakes than those who refuse to accept responsibility for their errors.
Somewhere along the line, I also realized that I felt more comfortable around people who admitted their mistakes. I didn’t enjoy trying to help someone correct something they had done, only to be accused of being too stupid to know what I was talking about. It took a while, but I gradually realized that “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” was more than a platitude. If I hoped others would at least listen to my input, I should extend the same courtesy. Even if they disagreed with my comments, I felt heard. I still struggle with listening sometimes, but I am making progress.
I hope I never begin an apology with “If I’ve offended anybody”. Usually when I hear someone say that, they pull out the phrase because people have told the speaker that they have been offended. There isn’t any “if” involved. In the case of my article, while no one told me to apologize, one of the Alley’s proofreaders did point out some of the implications of what I had written, which I wouldn’t have noticed on my own. The implications dealt with the history of the relationships between the various neighborhoods covered by the Alley, and it was obvious that my ignorance of this history had rubbed them the wrong way. So, again, to that particular reader, and to all the others who were put off by what I wrote, I do apologize for a poorly thought out article, and I will try to be more careful in the future.
by Marti Maltby, Director Peace House Community – A Place to Belong
This article originally appeared in “The Alley,” the newspaper for the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.