John Davison BAFTA Tourette’s incident and competing rights

People not bothering to educate themselves on Tourette’s and Coprolalia is what’s flaming for issue.

JD is probably the first White man to mention the word in the public square for 30 years, but lets all call him a racist. Lets get ourselves all worked up to fever pitch because it could be another 30 years before a White person say's it again, so we need to get the most out of outrage while we can.

Why do you think I don’t understand any other condition?

Of course it’s perfectly reasonable to have a trauma response.

But with time, that trauma response can be rationalised with knowing it was from someone with a severe disability.

Think of it the other way round. Imagine what it must be like going through every waking moment of your day knowing you might be triggering trauma responses in women, victims of racism, other disabilities etc and knowing not only that you can’t do anything about it, but the more you try and suppress it the worse it gets.

I agree that both sides need empathy.

before I go, reported for calling African Americans with families who had ancestors lynched 'professionally outraged rent-a-mob'. Have one of your ancestors hanging from a tree by the KKK and then have someone call you a 'professionally outraged rent-a-mob' by someone ignorant of the intergenerational trauma of black people by someone who has performative outrage for one group only, a white group.

What a shame this thread has been derailed into a bunfight along the lines of probably all the other current Tourettes threads.

I can assure you, nobody wants to read pages and pages of that! Not on this forum anyway.

I was really interested in the OP's perspective and was hoping to see a discussion about it.

@slet

Except there’s plenty of ableism (easily evidenced and they were the most deleted posts) and not a lot of evidenced racism.

That is not remotely what I said, is it?

But if you are suggesting that it would be wholly fine for a black person with Tourette’s to shout this word, but an equally blameless white man shouting it must be condemned, then you are being entirely irrational.

Hide away. Empathy is needed on both sides and if there were black people who were upset, then compassion is due. But if they chose to be offended to the point they criticize someone with a disability and demand segregation, then they themselves are lacking in empathy.

I disagree that he owes a public apology to appease the professionally outraged rent-a-mob, many of whom have now been hounding an Australian John Davidson simply because he has happens to share the same very common name. That’s the level of stupidity that we are dealing with here. No doubt they’d object to the wording no matter what he says and unlike most of the Hollywood big names, I doubt that John has the resources for and instant access to PR people, reputation managers and speechwriters to script an apology for him. Any help is likely to come from charities like Tourette Scotland/Tourettes Action.

Oh, we're back to 'black people call themselves the n word, therefore WHITE people can, too'

As a white person, he didn’t call black people the N word. His brain, completely involuntarily, made his body shout the word out loud despite his voluntary knowledge it’s offensive.

HTH.

Right, so you just don't understand any condition except Tourette's. Great.

You insist that someone, for instance, who may have a complex and traumatic history with sexual violence and domestic abuse, can control whether or not they have a trauma response to a man shouting 'stupid bitch', for instance. Which is ridiculous, and wrong.

Clearly your compassion and understanding goes no further than Tourette's

And I haven't said that people should be angry. I have said that it is not unreasonable for people to be hurt or upset to some degree, because of a tic.

Oh, we're back to 'black people call themselves the n word, therefore WHITE people can, too'. FFS, do no one understand the difference between an oppressed group RECLAIMING a word among themselves, and the white race using it?

This is 2026. That racist bigots are still so ignorant of the effect of white people using that word just shows the depths the UK has plunged to in racist ignorance. No wonder Reform is so popular.

'Black people say it, so white people can too', Oh just do FOTTFSOFOATFOSM.

With that, this thread is hidden.

Reporting for the ableist implication that tourette’s, a very real and impossibly hard disability, is being used as an excuse to be racist and that it is voluntary.

Well, for myself it's the fact that so many people let racist comments from a poster on this thread slide without so much as a whisper that shocked me, and that is racist in itself.

And no. I haven't said that Davidson should self-flagellate - I think his statement is pretty good, although I understand other people may not be happy with it. And I don't think MBJ or DL are the most oppressed people ever.

My points have mostly been around the fact that it is not unreasonable for people to feel upset by tics, and that some people may be unable to cope with tics for their own reasons. Not that people should exclude Davidson, or that they should be angry at him, but that it is not a moral failing to have an emotional reaction to a tic that comes in the form of a shouted slur, insult, or threat.

So, compassion for both sides, in essence.

That's good but there would be no need to speculate with "apparently" if he made a public apology for his public remark, which caused public distress.

If you say something that hurts and upsets others in private then by all means, a private apology is acceptable but if you say something terrible publicly (and it doesn't get much more public than this) than a public apology is not an outrageous expectation.

In fact, it is the refusal to do this that is flaming the issue.

Aw gold star for you for googling Delroy Lindo and feeling smug upon finding out he was born in Lewisham. My point still stands as his parents were part of the Windrush generation and he moved to the US at 16 in 1968, the same year MLK was assassinated. If you’re trying to insinuate this man wouldn’t have experienced horrible racism and having the N word shouted at him on live TV would be no big deal to him, please piss off and go read a book.

@GrooveArmada
'A disability trait cannot be categorised as offensive because the person virtually has no ability to act otherwise. It's neutral.
You are literally arguing that a disability trait can offend people of colour here, it's beyond belief.'

I think this is a good summary of much of the disagreement on this thread. I strongly disagree with what you say here. I think something can be offensive regardless of the intent of whomever said it. I can have an intent to help someone and still say something offensive. I can blurt something out bc of my tics and say something offensive. You would say neither of the above could be offensive.

I think the two views lead to a lot of misunderstanding about what others are saying ITT.

What struck me on hearing about this is that black people use that word themselves. That means that the word, in itself, is not inherently so offensive that it should never be used.

So if, on hearing that word, the hearer has to check the skin colour of the person using it to decide whether to take offence, then there is a degree of choice involved in that offence. Taking offence is not an uncontrollable response, even if there is an negative or shocked automatic reaction. Ultimately then, whether offence is taken ought to come down to intent.

I have read that the black actors on the stage looked startled, but did not otherwise respond. In a perfect world, they might have been ready with a witty retort that would have defused the situation, however not responding negatively is enough. If that’s true, then good for them.

It sounds to me as if others have taken offence on their behalf, which is incredibly unhelpful and does nothing to make anti-racism campaigners look reasonable and (sadly) makes them simply look prejudiced against those with disabilities.

This is somewhat analogous to the whole hate crime/non crime hate incidents situation. Some people who take offence are unreasonable and assuming an offence has been committed based on someone reporting that they feel offended is open to abuse. There has to be acknowledgement within society regarding how a theoretical rational person would respond. Otherwise we descend into madness as the perpetually offended bully the rest of society into silence.

Yet people who are aware of coprolalia aren’t bothered by being yelled at with “FUCKING CUNT”. I’m not.

People who aren’t aware of coprolalia ARE triggered by that.

People CAN control whether they are triggered by coprolalia, whatever the shouted words may be, if they take a moment to understand it.

If people are triggered by the words, whatever the shouted words may be, because they have never needed to, or bothered to understand and it caught them by surprise, that isn’t nice. And I can understand that would invoke a negative feeling initially.

But that doesn’t mean there’s justification for ongoing anger towards the person suffering from coprolalia or justification for demands for certain actions from him. What should he say sorry for?

“I’m sorry you weren’t educated enough about my condition that I made an award winning film about.”

“I’m sorry other people didn’t tell you enough about my condition before you came.”

The guy made a film explaining to all the people who hear what he says “it’s not about you” and still people think it’s about them.

I said I was happy to be given examples to educate myself. I already asked for many examples as on the other thread there were sooooo many, but none given. This one is dripping in racism, please educate me.

Seems like not agreeing with anything falling for John Davidson’s public flagellation and not agreeing that MJB and DL were the most oppressed people in the room is racism.

Oh, so blatant racism is fine and dandy if someone is trolling? Great. And if you didn't see the racism, then you perhaps need to educate yourself on that.

There has been undeniable racism!! A poster on this very thread was making outright racist jokes and comments, and did end up being deleted, but until then, multiple commenters were all just letting it slide. It was pretty horrible.

There were 110? thereabouts use of the N word in Django Unchained. Directed by a white man. Context is key.

Or equally saying there has been absolutely no racism in some of the responses. (Rather than in the incident itself)