That is what we didn’t know who she was really means, and it is the exact opposite of an apology; it is a confession that the person has no baseline respect for other human beings at all, only a sliding scale of deference calibrated to status.

A person of genuine decency never has occasion to say it, because their courtesy does not depend on knowing who someone is.

They are kind to the stranger and the celebrity alike, not because they cannot tell the difference, but because the difference is irrelevant to how a human being deserves to be treated.

Clara had built her company on people who would never need the excuse, because they would never do the thing that requires it.

And Karl, reaching for we didn’t know who she was as his defense, did not understand that he was not excusing his conduct but confessing the emptiness beneath it: that he possessed no respect for anyone he had not first determined to be worth respecting.