Following the 2026 BAFTAs, there has been huge uproar about the n-word being yelled out during Mr. Michael B. Jordan and Mr. Delroy Lindo’s presentation by John Davison, a man living with Tourette’s. Much has been said, I’ve said some things, others have said some things, lot’s of social media arguing has happened, and still there is more to say. So, here I am, saying more. This is specifically for non-Black folx – cuz we already be knowing.

In all the hubbub over this incident over the last several days, it has become clear to me that white people from many intersectional identities still lack the moral clarity to call a thing a thing, agree that apology is necessary, and to admit Black folx were harmed by this word regardless of intent, control, or specific disability (Tourette’s and coprolalia – feel free to do your own research, it is fascinating and informative). White folx all over the intersectional spectrum insis John Davidson, owes no one an apology for a word or behavior he literally cannot control. While I sympathize with Davidson immensely, he still needs to apologize without centering himself or his disability. Black folx understand he couldn’t control this outburst and the outburst likely had no meaning about his character, beliefs, identity, or anything else. But frankly, I’m tired of assuming good intent from white people. I don’t have a window into the souls of others. Whether they’re racist or not is not my concern.

A lot of people don’t think they’re racist while they do, say, or uphold racist things. Racism does not require intent or even consent from those doing, saying, or upholding the racist things. And the reality is twofold: 1) We all hold racist beliefs, thoughts, behaviors – it is the SYSTEM we were ALL SOCIALIZED in, whether we consented to this or not. As such, we all do a racism from time to time, even the very best of us. When we do that, we need to apologize and work to do better. 2) All of us will experience some degree of body betrayal (my term because my aging body is always and often betraying me) that will eventually harm someone else – whether a fart in public, clogging someone’s toilet with a huge shit, saying the absolute wrong thing at the absolute wrong time, smacking someone when we have a muscle spasm, stepping on someone’s toes, or something we did not intend, nor consent to, nor making our body behave in that way. When this happens, we apologize. Yes, this is probably an oversimplification. I’m not here to argue about Tourette’s, coprolalia, or disability. I’m pretty sure a wheelchair user who runs over someone’s toes, would stop and apologize for the accidental mishap.

White people, specifically, and a whole lot of non-Black people seem to be stuck in the “sticks and stones” era of your lives. Childhood – about elementary school-level of reasoning. Because they fail each and every time to acknowledge or understand, not just the history of this word, but that this word is dripping with genocide, bleeding vitriol, and warning of terrorist threat. They fail to understand because they lack the range and bandwidth to imagine, to put themselves into the shoes of others and imagine how they would experience something given the history. Every time the n-word is deployed, my body goes into hypervigilance. I start looking for exits. I start looking for whoever said it so I can gauge my danger level. I start looking for others as horrified as I am in hopes that they will also fight if necessary. My stomach sinks. A lump forms in my throat. I am immediately scared, then enraged, then ready to fight. My body shakes without my consent. And I think about how I can make a quick exit. My embarrassment and humiliation comes later, after the moment is over and I can collect myself. And all of those initial thoughts and behaviors happen in the first few seconds – always too slow and always too fast.

It wasn’t always like this. I remember the first time someone called me the n-word – at least the first time I remember. I was about 7-years old and in first grade, playing Barbies in my front yard, when two tall blonde high school boys (my neighbors) walked by and called me that word. I was unbothered as I didn’t know that word. Which is weird since my home was what language and reading teachers call a resource rich home. I had a ton of books, we were always reading, and my mom and grandma read to me every night. I had a huge vocabulary for a kid my age. Later, when I went inside, I asked my mom about this word. I remember feeling something shift in her, in our home, in my life but didn’t yet know what. As my mom recounts this moment, she remembers her fear about not being able to protect me from the violence of this word and this world. She talks about her fear about how this word would impact me and the violence that portends. I remember being horrified about what this word meant and not understanding how or why someone would hate me without even knowing me. I can’t remember if this was before or after I saw Roots, but it was around that time. So, fresh on my mind one way or the other, I remember being aggrieved about all my ancestors, my people, endured throughout the genocidal history of this country. (I’m adding the genocidal history here as a grown up, I didn’t yet know about genocide at that time.)

After this happened, my mom talked with our Black family friends. The daughter (around my age) had a solid line to say back to people who called her the n-word. She’d say something to the effect of “that’s the way God made me and I’m proud of it.” According to my mom, this would stop those racist remarks right in their path. I do remember asking something about if I didn’t believe in god and wasn’t a religious person would it matter, was it honest (because truthfulness was of paramount importance in my household). My mom assured me it was fine. So, the next time those high school boys came by and called me the n-word, I borrowed this phrase and repeated it to them. I never heard that word again from them. My feelings of terror would come later.

I have vague memory of being called this word on playgrounds and in hallways. Not often, certainly nowhere near as frequent as darker skinned Black people in my school district or anywhere else, I’m sure. What I have is the shadow of bodily memory rather than clear memories. That hypervigilance, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up feeling.

The last time I remember being called that word, I was a young woman walking up a street in Cle Elum, Washington. A little hick town of under 2,000 people in the foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range, just east of Seattle on Interstate 90. It’s a po-dunk little hick town with a history of coal mining and lumber. I was returning from new student orientation at Washington State University. While on my way to the orientation, my car had broken down just on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. I called my parents, sat in a local tavern drinking beers, waiting for my mom to come and get me to take me and drop me off at the orientation. I caught a ride back with another orienting student who dropped me at the auto repair shop where we had dropped the car days before. My car wasn’t ready, I had no money, and needed a place to stay for the night. So, I walked up to the Safeway to call home again and ask my parents for help. On my walk up the road, a truckload of white guys drove by and screamed the n-word at me. And by truckload, I mean there were at least 4 of them – two in the cab and two in the bed, but likely more than four. When it happened, I thought about flipping them off but thought better of it because immediately after that thought, I realized I was in a place where hiding a body would be so easy. I read and watch a lot of true crime stuff, including local (Washington State, Oregon, Alaska) stories about serial killers, of which there is an inordinate amount. I knew if these kids (I wouldn’t have put any of them as older than mid-20s) meant me violence, things could escalate quickly. So, I kept walking, pretending to ignore them, while I scanned the area, making sure the truck didn’t turn around and come back. I was raised to never let them see you sweat, never give them the satisfaction of seeing your fear, grief, or emotion.

I made it to the store, called home, told my dad about the truckload of guys and what they’d yelled at me. My dad wired me money so that I could get a hotel room for the night and some food. I wanted to get back to the hotel before it got dark and no longer felt safe trying to find a restaurant. When the mechanics told me my car wouldn’t be ready until the morning, I thought “cool, I’ll go back to that tavern if I can get a few bucks from my parents for a hotel”. After the incident, I wasn’t comfortable doing that. I didn’t want to be buzzed or drunk, walking back to my hotel, and these yokel locals come screaming by again. So, I bought food stuffs at Safeway and walked back to the hotel on high alert, got my room, locked the door, and stayed in all night.

I didn’t sleep particularly well. I wasn’t sure if perhaps I’d been followed. I believe I called my parents in the morning (and perhaps when I got back to the hotel the night before). because they were worried. I got to my car, started it up, and the dashboard lights didn’t light up. I asked about it. They gave me a bullshit answer that I knew was bullshit at the time but wanted to just get out of there and get home. My car ended up breaking down again in Seattle rush hour traffic. I got pulled over by the highway onramp from Northgate Mall in north Seattle and my dad came and got me. That whole car ordeal is another story.

The innocence of youth protected me from the full blow, the full impact of the word that my young adult self felt the full weight of terror that word is meant to invoke.

There simply is no equivalent word in the English language that carries the history, the white terrorism, the genocide that this word does. It is never a disparaging slur used for any other group. It is never followed by an actual apology. It is never met with the revilement it deserves.

When that word is deployed, too many non-Black people slip into the “sticks and stones” grade school mentality, gaslight us, shame us for having a strong reaction to the word, and race to the support of the person who said it rather than the person who was hit with it. We (Black people) are just supposed to suck it up, calm our bodies from the physical response to this word, and proceed as if a grievous violence wasn’t just perpetrated against us with the threat of potentially further violence just around the corner. We’re supposed to give grace to the person who said the word, while no grace is extended to us.

I’m through assuming good intent from white folx across any and all intersectional identities. Because too often those identities are weaponized against us to protect them from their racism – as if only white people can be disabled, women, trans, etc. As if we don’t understand nuance – bitch, please! Understanding nuance is how we have and continue to survive in this white supremacist, anti-Black, racist society, at home and abroad. No one understands nuance better than us. No one. And we understand that anyone can be anti-Black, even members of our own community (which is not weird, there are plenty of anti-Asian Asians, anti-trans trans folx, homophobic LGBT people, women who are paternalistic and misogynistic). Anti-blackness, just like white supremacy, exists despite someone having other oppressed identities. Just because we are all oppressed people doesn’t mean we just “get” each other or even that we see each other as being in the same club. And while it’s all oppression, anti-Blackness is particularly durable, lasting, and infectious. So infectious, that it hits new immigrants who learn quickly to be anti-Black (if they weren’t already) and distance themselves from Black people. Even Black African immigrants do this – distance themselves from African American descendants of American slavery.

Non-Black people do not understand the terror that goes through our bodies when that word is deployed. They may not understand how racism (this word being only one of the more obvious and consistent ways racism might show up) and our daily interactions with it impacts our physical health. And yes, our mental health as well – which should be unsurprising to even the most virulent intentionally ignorant racist. There’s even a word for it, racial battle fatigue. Racial battle fatigue is one way to understand how the racism impacts us. While some may think RBF is just mental or emotional, it is much deeper than that. Research demonstrates how RBF (or racial trauma, race related stress, etc) impacts health in myriad ways. We’ve known for some time about intergenerational PTSD and how that changes the DNA structure of descendants of Holocaust survivors and African descendants of enslaved people. We are beginning to understand the health effects of sustained racial trauma (and really we need to understand racialized trauma as the same as toxic stress, because that is what it is). It includes mental and physical health, and ages us faster – scholars call this weathering. Further, secondary trauma impacts us as well –watching others experience racialized abuses, supporting friends and colleagues experiencing racialized abuses, etc. 

So, while it is becoming clear that the BBC and the BAFTAs set up John Davidson and every single Black person in attendance and viewing the recording, it is important to understand this particular nuance because it is really life and death. Watching Mr.s Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, stand on that global stage being hit with that word without the intent and consent of the person speaking it (John Davidson), my soul sank and my heart hurt for these men who were just doing their jobs. Two beautiful, brilliant, incredibly talented Black men stood in their dignity on that stage and received the full impact and weight of that nasty hateful genocidal word and carried on. It was painful to see. It’s painful to reflect upon. And my heart hurts for them and all the Black people in attendance. The BBC and the BAFTAs owed them all duty of care (the Black folx and John Davidson). And they demonstrated that they cared more about editing out a “free Palestine” statement at the end of one winner’s speech, while feeling a-okay leaving in this degrading violent genocidal word because it probably amused a bunch of white folx seeing these particular Black men, but Black men generally, being called the n-word. A reminder to “know your place” and “don’t get too uppity with your success and wealth and beauty”. One more reminder that a bunch of white people will run to comfort and protect the person who said the thing rather than the people harmed by the thing. And the nuance here is that both parties are owed repair for the set-up and lack of protection. And Davidson still owes Mr.s Jordan and Lindo (and Hannah Beachler as well) an actual apology – not because of his intent or lack thereof. Not an apology for his disability, because that is crazy. But an actual apology that acknowledges the harm these two men endured because of that word. And every single non-Black person in that room is owed them an apology as well. But the burden lies with the BBC and the BAFTAs first and foremost. They did a shit job. The n-word is less offensive to non-Black ears than a curse word (which are customarily edited out of televised events).

And every time Black people read, see, witness, learn about another anti-Black racist incident, we are hit with secondary trauma, piled on top of our generational PTSD and whatever trauma we’ve endured in our lives.

And really, none of this is notable in a racist, white supremacist, anti-Black society and world. It’s just another day that ends in y. And we have to pick ourselves up and carry on like nothing happened, like we weren’t hit with that word in public, and make it to our hotel room for the night in our attempt to get home.

There is no scenario where this word is not violent, regardless of who’s saying it or the context surrounding the saying. I and the vast majority of Black folx understand Mr. Davidson has no control over whether to say this word, when, where, or to whom. The word itself is violent, even as Mr. Davidson may not be (I refuse to assign anything to his own thinking, character, beliefs, or otherwise – I don’t know the man and am also never assuming good intent from men, especially white men, ever again.) The word is violent. Full stop. Periodt. Just as Mr. Davidson is incapable of controlling his coprolalia, we are incapable of controlling our bodily, nervous, and endocrine system responses to that word. The n-word is never neutral, never not weaponized, never not violent, never loosed from its history. Maybe one day, but that day is not today and it will be a long time before it is any of those things.

The reality is that we are always unprotected in mixed spaces. We are too frequently denigrated in mixed spaces. And we can’t trust none of y’all with our softest most tender parts. What’s more, y’all don’t deserve them. You don’t deserve us. And I KNOW we deserve a whole lot better than what we’ve gotten.

Regardless of the word, the violence stemming from it, and the centuries of ethnic cleansing and genocide of my people, I’d still choose to be born Black in this life and the next and every time thereafter.