For both Disabled and Black communities, there was a lot that could’ve been learned from what happened at the BAFTAs in February, when John Davidson, Tourette’s advocate and subject of the biopic I Swear (which earned an EE Best Rising Star award for lead Robert Aramayo), involuntarily ticced the ‘N-word’ to two Black presenters: Sinners actors Micheal B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo.

Instead, what took place was a sadly typical online ‘culture war’ between an angry Disability community and those defending Davidson versus an equally angry Black community and those supporting the presenters.

 

On the one hand Davidson was subjected to harmful, regressive and anti-disabled remarks about him ‘meaning it’ and needing to be ‘kept at home’. Actor Jamie Foxx, for example, should’ve recognised the huge opportunity they had to shape public understanding of a misrepresented conditions like Tourette’s and issued a more reflective, nuanced statement, rather than one which will only invite more hate by saying John intended to use the ‘N’ word.

On the other hand, Black people’s pain has been dismissed as inconsequential to the harm caused to Davidson, and they have been collectively judged as ‘ignorant’ and ‘anti-disabled’ or seen as oversensitive and selfish for wanting to see an apology or for being upset.

Explainer:  Tourette syndrome is a condition that causes people to make sudden, repetitive sounds and/or movements called tics. People with Tourette (or Tourette’s) cannot control their tics.

In some cases, as Irish author Emma Dabiri has highlighted, these clashes have been manufactured and/or inflamed strategically by right wingers who benefit from having marginalised people fight each other instead of working together to challenge the status quo.

These toxic debates can also be fuelled by influencers whose angry reactions may be genuine, but who have not thought through the impact of what they’re saying; or more cynically, by people whose platforms may benefit from rage-bait posts that social media algorithms typically reward.

 

Trouble always comes when marginalised people are manipulated or provoked into being pitted against each other rather than seeing the full context of what has happened and where accountability is actually needed.

So, this is my attempt to provide some of that context, clarity and nuance on what has been a very hostile and at times upsetting social media debate, especially as someone who is mixed-race/Black and neurodivergent themselves.

The BBC has said its editors, who were working in a truck, didn’t hear the now infamous utterance of the N-word although they did hear, and remove, another vocalisation of the word and other words and phrases besides.

Regardless of why the ‘N-word’ was left in, what is clear is that the BBC and the BAFTAs bear the most responsibility for the way they harmed both the neurodivergent/Tourette’s community and the Black community.

As Davidson stated in a Variety interview, they very much knew that he would be likely to tic and the floor manager even warned the audience about it before the event started to prepare them, yet he was still sat near a mic that picked up his tics despite it being, according to Bafta, an ‘equaliser microphone’ designed to monitor sound and not to amplify people’s voices.

The Black members of the audience watching the ceremony and those watching at home were also subjected to a formulaic and insultingly weak apology delivered by Alan Cumming, telling people: ‘We apologise if you were offended’.

As if there were a universe where hearing the ‘N word’ coming out of a white person’s mouth at a public event, regardless of it being an involuntary tic, wouldn’t be offensive.

Further, the organisers failed to warn Micheal B. Jordan or Delroy Lindo about his verbal outbursts, despite the audience being warned, which left them under pressure to absorb the shock of what had happened and keep on presenting as they did. It was painful to watch them go through that.

Nor did Jordan, Lindo or the others affected receive in-person apologies from BAFTA immediately after the ceremony; instead the BATAs issued a belated public apology statement which indicated they took ‘full responsibility’ (a responsibility that should be shared with the BBC) and yet showed, in my opinion, a distinct lack of care towards Black artists, who have no doubt already faced discrimination in a white-dominated cutthroat industry.

Similarly, whilst they make a show of caring about Disabled people, they still award non-Disabled actors for ‘cripping up’ rather than finding ways to encourage people with conditions to act in roles that reflect their lived experience.

As much as I admired Aramayo’s performance, I couldn’t help feeling how much life experience a neurodivergent actor could’ve brought to the performance and how much more they would’ve benefitted from the exposure.

Whilst they make a show of caring about Disabled people, they still award non-Disabled actors for ‘cripping up’

We know that Davidson, and others with Tourette’s, cannot help what they tic and this can lead to social stigma, especially if they have, as Davidson does, a symptom called a coprolalia, which causes people to say offensive words.

Davidson cannot suppress his tics for long and when they come, they are so ‘aggressive’ that they burst out of him like a ‘gunshot’. He is especially prone to saying them, he has stated, in times of ‘stress’ such as at public events.

It should not, therefore, have come as a surprise to either Davidson or to the audience members who had listened to the warning about his tics, when he involuntarily blurted a series of offensive words during the awards ceremony, including the remarks ‘boring!’ ‘paedophile’ and ‘shut the f*** up!’

Davidson, though, has said he wasn’t aware his tics could be heard by presenters until he saw Jordan’s and Lindo’s reactions, at which point he voluntarily left the ceremony and went to a private screening room.

Davidson certainly deserves our support and sympathy for the impossible and incredibly exposing situation he was put in by the BBC and the BAFTAs, and absolutely no one should be setting out to vilify or harass him after a lifetime of being attacked (as the film shows he was once beaten by strangers with a crow bar for ticking when passing a young woman) and immediately judged for his condition.

However, I think it’s good to also understand that the above doesn’t minimise the profoundly upsetting impact the slur still has on Black people. It is a word that can immediately conjure up horrific racial violence and brutal oppression, a history of slavery, genocide and empire.

As many have said we should have the ability to hold two truths at once: that Davidson is not at fault for his tics and also that hearing such a slur is still painful. Neither truth should cancel the other one out. We can be too quick to ‘pick a side’ and then dismiss the other perspective.

We also lose our intersectional understanding when we fail to comprehend that racism and anti-disabled attitudes are linked. For example, some Black people may lack understanding of disability because many of our ancestors will have been taught to fear and reject it after being constantly labelled as ‘mentally defective’, ‘stupid’, ‘primitive’ or ‘worthless’ by colonialists, eugenicists and slaveholders.

Another link is that people of colour may be burdened by discrimination on the basis of both their race and their condition or impairment. Furthermore, racial discrimination, in the form, for example, of dumping environmental problems disproportionately onto the shoulders of global majority people, can cause impairment/conditions.

There is a ‘need to balance accessibility for participants with the safety and dignity of others in the room and watching at home.’

The BBC/BAFTA needed to understand the intersectional impact of their inclusion processes on their diverse audiences and not just pat themselves on the back for having included Davidson at the event.

As the Independent Review conducted by the social change consultancy RISE puts it: There is a ‘need to balance accessibility for participants with the safety and dignity of others in the room and watching at home.’

As for Davidson, he and other Disabled campaigners with a public platform, should, in my view, use their position to promote the stories and voices of those who not only have Tourette’s or other conditions but are also racialised, including by being treated more harshly by police. I think if he had been doing things like that, then talking about such work would’ve been a great example of how to recover from such a racially sensitive incident.

We can only respond constructively to the issue of different oppressed groups having seemingly opposing needs if we can understand each other’s perspectives, and the intersecting complexities and variety in the experience of being marginalised. If we can learn to do that then maybe we can, instead of fighting each other, start fighting the systems and cultural institutions which keep us oppressed, alienated and misunderstood.