For two weeks I have remained silent. And that was just plain dumb. Oh, not THE dumbest thing — not by a long shot. The dumbest thing I’ve ever done was without a second thought to give my approval to a cartoon — we all know which one — that has proven hurtful to so many people — people I care about. It has also proven hurtful to an institution I love and to colleagues who are blameless.

And that, in the end, is what forces me to break this utterly uncharacteristic silence of mine.

It was last Thursday, the Herald’s State House reporter — as hard-working a guy as you’d ever want to have on the payroll — asked Gov. Deval Patrick a question about an American Civil Liberties Union report alleging police bias that was released earlier that day.

“Is the Herald asking me a question about race?” Patrick snapped at him. “The Herald about race? I don’t think you want to do that.”

The governor later apologized to our reporter adding, “I have very strong feelings about that cartoon. I’m sorry. It’s not personal to you.”

Well, governor I’m the one you want. I’m the one you should be snapping at. I’m the one who’s to blame — not my colleagues and not my paper.

So how do these things happen? It’s the question everyone wants answered. And they deserve an answer.

It starts with a cartoonist looking on his bathroom counter at the toothpaste his kids left there. If only it had been bubblegum flavored. If only.

It starts with a decent and honorable and utterly guileless man who gets an image lodged in his brain. And by the way it’s a brain that over the course of 28 years on the job has chronicled the life of this city and its people. He’s the very same man who back in 1988 used his pen and his wit and his art to support then-Mayor Ray Flynn’s efforts to integrate public housing in Southie. And for his trouble he endured weeks of death threats from those who didn’t think that was such a good idea.

Back then he would walk into my office with a handful of sketches. Today technology means that a rough drawing comes into my email inbox.

But it’s my job as an editor to see around corners, to look at all the possible meanings and nuances of words and of images. It’s my job and two weeks ago I failed at it miserably. And that’s all on me and this is why.

When I have foreign visitors come by — other journalists or public officials — I like to start with a tour of our Seaport offices. We start in the 6th floor newsroom and then come down to my office on the 5th floor. It begins a conversation about the traditional American structure of a newspaper — that separation of news and opinion. The fact that the folks in the newsroom are not responsible for what happens on the editorial pages any more than I am responsible for what happens on Page One.

That clear bright line — at least it’s a clear bright line inside the building — has been horribly muddied in the aftermath of the cartoon-that-should-never-have-been. My errors are mine alone. But if even the governor doesn’t understand that perhaps it is time to explain that basic principle.

Yes, a final page proof does go up to the 6th floor where a desk editor will read the editorials, make sure we haven’t made some obvious error of fact and in the event a topic has been overtaken by breaking news events will pick up the phone and advise me that we need an update. On the night in question — the night the cartoon appeared on a page proof, the proof was not left in the proper bin. No senior news editor ever saw it.

And every evening the publisher gets a copy of the editorials sent to his email — not the images — only the words.

So there you have it. The remarkably simple way in which bad stuff can happen.

A little over a week ago and just days after the cartoon appeared, it was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and so surrounded by friends I stood in temple and prayed for forgiveness. But there’s a footnote to all of those traditional prayers. It is that God can forgive for offenses committed against God — but not for offenses committed against another human being. For that we must seek forgiveness from those we have wronged.

That is what I most humbly do now with all my heart.

Rachelle G. Cohen is editor of the editorial pages.