John Davison BAFTA Tourette’s incident and competing rights

[slet]

It’s interesting how this is being discussed atm. I see Ash Sarkar has framed it as an example of competing rights between disabled people and victims of racism, forgetting about intersectionality. But there is a struggle from those on the extreme left to see how women’s rights are compromised by ceding to TRAs.

not expressing myself very well but thought it had some interesting parallels with the sex and gender debate.

If you’d bothered to read all my posts on the thread you’d see there are a bit more the two ‘dismissive’ sentences. I’m dismissing most of your posts though as you are just blowing hot air and well balanced views seemed to have escaped you. Heard ten thousand times but understand none. 👍

It’s always funny when in accusing someone, a person inadvertently reveals their own point of view. It’s quite clear that it’s you that wants the two black men decentred and all the attention and sympathy on the white man. I have little doubt that if the races were reversed and a white slur had been shouted you would not be on here writing hundreds of paragraphs ‘educating’ people on Tourette’s or calling people upset at the situation ‘performative’. These situations always reveal true thoughts and it’s a sad reflection of where this country still is in 2026.

MN guidlines are not to engage but to report.

Hot air.

My point stands.

Spend five minutes on social media or at any football match when a black player makes a mistake and report back.

Wow.

Yep.

So it has to be performative.

Janice Turner's take in the Times

www.thetimes.com/article/d515724c-ad20-4914-8eab-aedb08f2ec85?shareToken=523fc85664586af5c42b6ae49d912f91

@RedToothBrush
thank you for the thoughtful and informative post. It’s refreshing to read a really balanced response.

Like I say, I don’t want to control language.

I think we need shared understandings. When words change meaning, we lose consensus. Language depends on agreement.

What was the “shared understanding” of the N word built on? And who got to shape that consensus? Who is telling us they’re better placed to define a mutually agreed meaning now?

If meaning must be fixed by “shared understanding” and “consensus,” what shared experiences are you bringing to the table when it comes to the N word?

In no particular order (and with a few thrown in for our American cousins), a few shared meaning making experiences past and present.

Caribbean plantation slavery under British rule
Compensation paid to slave owners – a debt only recently finished
Colonial devastation across Africa and the Caribbean
Racial hierarchies of the British Empire
“Scientific” race theory taught in British institutions
“No Coloureds” housing and job discrimination
The Middle Passage
Slavery in the American South
Enforced breeding of enslaved women
Family separation through sale
Whipping, branding and mutilation
The Fugitive Slave Act
The KKK
Jim Crow segregation
Apartheid
SUS laws
The Windrush scandal
Over-policing
Maternal mortality disparities
The murder of Stephen Lawrence
Medical equipment not calibrated for Black and Brown skin
Limiting of pain relief
Adultification of Black children
The Liverpool Black childrens scandal
Henrietta Lacks
Structural racism
Tuskegee Syphilis Study

I could go on for pages.

One group had and has the power to define another as inferior. So reclaiming meaning isn’t “muddying the waters.” It’s challenging who got to write the meaning in the first place.

That is exactly what went through my mind.

Jamie Foxx is not all Black people.

I’d prefer the N word died out completely. But I respect the right of others in the Black community to decide for themselves whether to reclaim it. These debates happen in most marginalised communities when it comes to slurs used against them.

I would say that it happens in all communities when slurs are used against them.
I am not going to gatekeep what words communities call themselves even if the some of the community disagree.

Its not my fight to have but like RedToothBrush I believe that it does muddy the waters.

But as I posted before, When in the classroom I (and any teacher) would not allow any pupil of any ethnicity to use slurs even if aimed at pupils of the same ethnicity. So there are exceptions.

I agree there is no place for slurs in schools.

In an ideal world schools would be unifying spaces, but they are more divisive than ever.

Maybe you’ve not been to a school
in a while but they have enthusiastically embraced every slur you can think of.

Oh, I know. It's depressing and getting worse. I don't envy anyone who works in a school. The profession is losing brilliant teachers every year.

It's not about being performative, it's about making sure a space doesn't tolerate or appear to endorse racist language.

When similar comments were made about Tourette's, they were challenged, vigorously. But racism? Silence.

Its not my fight to have but like RedToothBrush I believe that it does muddy the waters.

How? Maybe within the Black community, yeah, but in the, 'if you're not black, don't use it' realm, the waters are crystal clear.

Jesus....They made a mistake. They managed everything else going on that night and they just missed this one thing. They apologised and they changed it after the fact.

It is possible to recognise that this a disability AND it would have been confronting to hear that word in that context. There are no sides to be picked. Anyone who needs "educating" on either side can do that with google. \

A few weeks ago there was an street interview with a middle aged black british woman. She said it was a disgusting word and should be treated as such. She said that the fact it is used so widely in popular music will cause an issue, because if you are in a crowd only half of the group can sing a long. Behaviour like that reinforces racial divides and will cause further disruption.

They made a series of mistakes.

A two hour lag to edit something that has been specifically brought to their attention?

No-one bothering to speak to Michael or Delroy afterwards.

Having a mic in the audience, right in front of where John was sitting.

Well, at least they got their publicity and clicks I guess.

Who said he was?

I was pointing out the example of how the discussion around the word is not anything to do with reclamation, it’s about its intended use.

Thanks for the link to the article 👍

I watched this analysis from a Norwegian media/culture commentator discussing the differing responses from the US and the UK - I thought it was interesting too: