Felicity Huffman: White is the colour of remorse

(MENAFN- The Conversation) It is not a shock to discover that white people with status and deep pockets often get what they want when they want it.

Another fact not lost on many racialized, Black and Indigenous people: white is the preferred colour of remorse.

On Sept. 13, 2019, actor Felicity Huffman expressed remorse and shame in response to the college admissions scandal for which she was handed a 14-day prison sentence and a $30,000 fine, in exchange for a plea deal.

As reported by CNN, she told the judge: 'I am deeply ashamed of what I have done.''At the end of the day I had a choice to make. I could have said, 'no.''

We recently presentedresearch on remorse and the performance of emotion in cases involving dangerous offenders in Canadian courts.We studied how race matters in the performance and interpretation of remorse by analyzing five years of Canadian media coverage and literature.

Crimes in communities are generally looked at in two ways. One is that the defendant is an expected criminal, fulfilling stereotypes and bias. Their criminal actions are seen as a natural by-product of a lifetime of disadvantage, abuse or pathology.

Alternatively, the story can be seen as coming out of nowhere, defying expectations regarding who commits crimes. Individuals who have no prior history dealing with the criminal justice system seem out of place — as if they don't belong here.

While we focus our research on Canada, we note the parallels with the United States.

The fallout from this case is a potent reminder of how North American courts – not to mention the court of public opinion in the United States and Canada – reinforce the system of white privilege. Reni Eddo Lodge, the author of Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, defines white privilege as'a manipulative, suffocating blanket of power that envelops everything we know, like a snowy day.'

In this case, thejudge was movedby Huffman's show of remorse about her hand in this debacle and how she let down her daughter, Sophia.

The point here is not to suggest that Huffman deserved a harsher sentence. The key message is that courts and the legal system, along with the helpful hand of the media, imagine some folks as worthier of condemnation simply because of how they interpret the defendant's ability to emote (or fail to emote) feelings.

The social media fallout from the Huffman case has been intense, with much of the anger centered on the light punishment meted out to a white A-list celebrity, with several commentators referencing the excessive charges levelled at Black defendants.

Karlous Miller, a Black comedian,tweeted:'Black people, you ever heard of a two-week prison sentence?'

Last month in Alabama, Alvin Kennard, a Black man, was released from prison after spending36 years in prison for stealing $50 from a bakery.

By contrast, Brock Turner, the white student-athlete from Stanford University who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman in 2015, was handed a sentence of six months in jail for his crime. 'Because (sic) Mr. Turner came before us today and said he was genuinely sorry for all the pain that he has caused to [Jane] and her family. And I think that is a genuine feeling of remorse,'the judge in the case said at the time of sentencing.

As American legal scholarM. Eve Hanan explains:

Huffman issued apublic apologyand mea culpa which was similarly received:

Remorse belongs to a class of 'retractive emotions,' such as guilt, shame, regret and contrition. As Michael Proeve at University of Adelaide and Steven Tudor at La Trobe University write in their book,Remorse: Psychological and Jurisprudential Perspectives : these are 'retractive' emotions, which means they distance themselves from something that is associated with the self. 'That something may be an action, an omission, or simply a certain state or condition of being.'

It is difficult to assess the authenticity of Huffman's expression of remorse. What we do know, however, is that the ability to express or perform remorse can be critical when judges determine a sentence. And, surprisingly, despite remorse being the least understood emotion, many of us seem to think that we have a natural ability to sniff out the fakers.

Race matters in these implicit assessments.

As Hanan suggests in her review of remorse bias and racism, remorse functions as a 'proxy for overall character.' This means it is easy for an assessment of remorse to degrade into the implicit bias associating Black with criminality. Rather than crediting a display of remorse, as the court did in Turner's case, the implicit bias of Black criminality works to discount Black displays of remorse.

White people must confront the reality that their expressions of remorse often elicit sympathy and compassion. When racialized people express regret, however, they are often viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility. White is the privileged colour of remorse.

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This is a corrected version of an article originally published on Sept. 16, 2019. The earlier story said Brock Turner was sentenced to six months' probation instead of jail.

Sentencing
Courts
Legal system
Justice system
Emotion
Critical Race

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