lavendertook

Why "I'm sorry" and NOT "What I meant" is a good starting point:

It really isn't that hard to respond with a suitable apology to objections about your saying something insensitive or that could obviously be taken as insensitive, even if you didn't mean it that way in the context in which you said it, if you respect your audience. Trying to explain away or deny the original comment's possible implications, and not the original comment itself, always creates the fail scenario. If you don't make a clear and unequivocal apology demonstrating your respect for the objector, your friends or fans will burn and pillage to try to defend you and justify their own views.

Right here, Debbie Reese looks at a remark Neil Gaiman made and explains why she finds it troubling, and asks whether anyone ever publicly discussed that quote again with NG before she came across it.

Quite contrary to jumping to conclusions and accusations, she is offering NG an opportunity to clarify his statement in the context of why she finds it troubling, and to give an opportunity to anyone in his reading community who read the comment before to also discuss it and reflect on why they did not remark upon it before. She explains the cost of using the phrase "a few dead Indians" which reinforces the idea that there weren't thriving Native American civilizations for centuries before European encroachment, and aids the erasure of the continued existence of First Nations' cultures and peoples. Many education systems in the US and worldwide still fail to discuss this, and even contradict this fact. It doesn't matter that you may be better informed yourself--a great many more people are not.

For her reasonable query and explanation, within a few hours, Debbie Reese is accused of lacking reading skills by 8 commenters rushing to Neil Gaiman's defense. She is accused of looking for ridiculous reasons to be offended by 6, of bringing up an issue of little importance by 6, of being too emotional/over-sensitive by 3, and of being a self-involved jerk by 2. And I'm not even including the vitriol that was thrown at both Debbie Reese and kynn at Kynn's journal. None of this behavior is surprising or new, and keeps happening over and over again. The bingo card is full.

( Some suggestions on handling one's own fail . . . )

ithiliana posted a link round-up and good info on why the subject of graveyards and dead Indians might be a sensitive topic for many Native Americans.