Hello {{ first name | friends}},
By now, most of you have heard about the racial slur (the N-word) said by John Davidson MBE, a Scottish campaigner for Tourette Syndrome, at the BAFTAs when Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan were on stage. The utterance of the slur is an example of coprolalia, the involuntary utterance of inappropriate and obscene words and phrases.
I made several attempts to write this piece, starting immediately after the incident I'm talking about was reported. It took a while because every time I started to write I got so enraged about the way it has been handled by all those who had the choice to do better and failed to take it.
No Absolution
It would be wrong of me to attack John Davidson for something he had no control over. But that still doesn't absolve him of responsibility to acknowledge the impact of that word on the men whose moment was ruined, nor is he absolved from making an unreserved apology for that impact after the harm had occurred.
And it definitely doesn't absolve the BAFTA organisers and host or the BBC of responsibility for how they handled it in the moment and after the event, which might best be described as an epic fail on multiple fronts.
What's most telling about the whole incident is whose feelings were prioritised immediately after the slur was uttered. Because it wasn't the Black men who'd felt the impact. You can see the moment Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo freeze before carrying on and doing what they were there to do.
The host, Alan Cumming, apologised to the audience - the audience!
I still have trouble fathoming how that was the decision he made.
Because, whether intended or not, the harm done to both men by the racial abuse was and is real. The N-word wasn't and isn't innocuous, especially when uttered by someone racialised as white. (I personally would have it erased from existence, but that's another story.)
When you do harm, you apologise, even if the harm wasn't intended. That's what we teach our children. Why should we do any less as adults? And the impact of this tic was very, very harmful.
The Belated "Nopology"
But nobody apologised to Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan in that moment. And according to Delroy Lindo, nobody from the BAFTAs organising team even spoke to him about it on the day it happened.
The BBC later offered an inadequate and lukewarm "nopology" (a word coined by my sister Lisa Hurley) to anyone who might have been offended (sorry, Beeb, pretty much every Black person I've asked about it was offended and hurt - no "might" about it.)
Anyone Black in the audience, anyone Black watching, and anyone Black reading or hearing about it later will also have experienced harm, because so many of us - and multiple generations of our ancestors - have been attacked by that word.
The harm is compounded because of the way the “incident” was handled, if you could call it that; it reinforces the lack of safety and care many Black people experience in white majority spaces. And the level of accountability expected from white people - none.
At the time of writing, it was almost a day later when Davidson issued a kind of apology, albeit one that recognised no harm and accepted no responsibility, so why did he even bother? Yes, the tic was involuntary (and very embarrassing for him) but harm was done to the two men on stage so a proper apology is the only way to move forward, and well within his capacity.