Our Apologies
We have been in the process of developing this message of apology
for several weeks now. It has been a difficult road for us, but one we are
thankful for as we approach the other side of things and see God working in
us to become not only better people, but also different people as we learn
from our mistakes and unrealized offenses that have been brought to our
attention in recent days because they have caused pain to so many of you who
we desire to call friends.
We want to say first and foremost to the Asian American community,
and to all those who have been hurt or offended by our work in any way, that
we are deeply sorry. We truly are. We realize that we made an ignorant,
horrible decision to produce material that was offensive, simply for the
purpose of making people laugh. While we love making people laugh, we regret
that it came at the costly price of hurting people. We understand that it
is your choice on whether or not to receive our apology and offer
forgiveness. However, we hope you will believe us when we say that we truly
did not mean any harm in our actions that obviously have been very harmful
to many. We were ignorant of our own failures, shortcomings, and
understandings about the feelings of others. We were wrong to have them in
the first place and have already grown personally from this experience as
painful as it has been both to those we have offended as well as to us for
being the offenders. Again, we are deeply sorry.
This terrible experience has opened our eyes to the ignorance we
have regarding the daily hurt that ethnic groups experience because of
stereotypes. At the same time, we are thankful for the help of those in the
Asian community, who recognized what we had done was hurtful, yet believe
that our intention was not to be hurtful, and thus are willing to help us
learn and grow through this process.
- We have gone through several different stages in this process from
unbelief, to frustration, to defensiveness and finally to accepting the
truth of the error of what we have done. Through all of these stages, we
have made different decisions as we have been seeking to correct our error
and seek to make some kind of amends for the pain we caused.
- On February 23, we removed the book in question from our
website and destroyed all that we had in our possession.
- We have been and are currently still in the process of
working with Youth Specialties and Zondervan in the process of editing the
book for re-publication. These are both great organizations and we are thankful for their help in this process. If you have not had the chance to read the open apology by Mark Oestreicher, President of Youthspecialties, then please do so at http://www.ysmarko.com/ .
- On February 23, we removed the mp3 of the skit in
question from our website. Since then, we have also removed other audio and
pdf versions of scripts that we now understand to be offensive in nature.
- We have been in an ongoing dialogue with Dr. Rev.
Soong-Chan Rah in an attempt to learn and grow in this area. He has been
very helpful in suggesting a couple of books to read and will follow up with
more discussions.
- On February 25, we began the process of working on a
script or scripts with friends both among the Asian American community as
well as others who we trust may be able to help us learn from our mistakes
as we also seek to help educate others about the racial issues that exist in
our world and in the church. This will be a lengthy process as we need to
be educated before we can begin to educate others.
- Since our first e-mail about this issue on February 19, we have
personally replied to everyone who took the time to contact us and are
committed to respond to anyone who is interested in voicing frustration,
anger, disgust, confusion, etc. We realize that the book of Proverbs
teaches that "where words are many, sin is not absent." Thus, in choosing
to respond to all who wish to continue in this dialogue with us, we realize
that we run the risk of being misunderstood in the future. That is a risk
we are willing to take as we desire both to learn how to grow in this area
of our lives where growth is needed, as well as to listen and respond to
those who may wish to talk with us more about the issue at hand. If you
would like to open a dialogue with us, please feel free to e-mail us at
tommy@skitguys.com or eddie@skitguys.com. We would love to learn to grow together with you in the days ahead.
Tommy Woodard & Eddie James
