Two things can be true at once

 

This past Sunday at the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards, a distressing event happened when black male actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting an award. In silence, the N word was hurled at them by John Davidson who was there in attendance for his movie about his biopic, I Swear, and was audible. The tone shifted to an environment of becoming uncomfortable as well as awkward. 

Actor, singer, and activist John Davidson has had Tourette’s since he was about 25 — Tourettes Syndrome is characterized as a nervous system disorder where the individual repeats involuntary, specific  movements, or vocal stems. Davidson has a sector of Tourette’s called coprolalia (about 10-30% of cases are affected) where the individual involuntary will vocally express socially inappropriate and obscene, taboo things. 

According to many people who attended the BAFTA awards, Jordan and Lindo weren’t the only ones where the slur was directed at them; one of the crew members who worked alongside the movie Sinners mentioned that Davidson called her the slur has well at one point before he left, and the word was said multiple other times. 

Two things can be true at once — It is true that Davidson has a condition where he can’t control the things he says, but the humiliation Jordan and Lindo experienced in front of their peers also cannot be ignored nor erased from the narrative as well. Two have both these black actors who have made major contributions to the film industry and gave Oscar worthy performances in Sinners does go back to the award ceremony in means of protections and safeguarding. There was no protection for these two actors, or any other black individuals who were victims to this word. The traumatic history of the word cannot be erased no matter whose mouth it comes out of (in terms of white and non-black individuals). With a lot of the discourse online, I think there’s room for both creating narratives and conversations where people who are disabled especially people with Tourette’s can speak their truth, but also not putting black folks in a position where they have to be forgiving. 

It’s true that both communities were harmed — by the BBC not choosing to edit out the slur toward the two men, it makes the Tourette’s community look bad and in the same breath, it has placed harm toward the black community.

Within this discourse, black people should have the right and emotional authority to feel angry and hurt — usually when white people have used the N word in the past, there’s always some kind of excuse or even “justification” on why they used it instead of holding themselves accountable and listening to what the black people around them are saying. Even when white people use it, they are always coddled by the masses instead of being held accountable. Davidson has not used his platform to give a direct apology to Jordan or Lindo and has only expressed his mortification of using it. The BBC since then has also given a clunky apology and it’s even stated that Davidson had involuntary used a homophobic slur toward the BAFTA host, Alan Cumming but the section was removed, yet they kept in the use of the N word and additionally edited out any “political undertones” from acceptance speeches. 

I applaud Jordan and Lindo, for their professionalism, but even that feels wrong because they are human too, but had one of them made a loud enough facial expression or said something regarding the slur toward them, the media would’ve focused all their attention toward them, calling them ableist; the media would’ve still failed to protect them. 

I believe the BBC revealed its true colors and its true priorities as there could’ve been stronger accommodations made to create a safe space for both Davidson, and Jordan and Lindo, but instead they were ignored and a time for celebration was overshadowed by embarrassment and humiliation.