OPINION:
As an African American, I am highly offended by the outburst at the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) last month (“BAFTA and BBC apologize for racial slur during awards show by guest with Tourette’s syndrome,” Web, Feb. 23).
Although John Davidson, who shouted the N-word at Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, reportedly suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, he should have been escorted out (and would have been had he been Black). BAFTA decided to exercise editing control when another Black male, Akinola Davies Jr., ended his acceptance speech with “Free Palestine.”
BAFTA’s intentionality was clear when it broadcast the show without editing out the N-words.
“Sinners” broke records. We were excited — and then triggered and dismayed. More sympathy went toward the shouter than to Messrs. Jordan and Lindo. Google jumped on the bandwagon with: “See more on ‘N-word-s,’” which took it several days to censor. Again, cue apology.
It would be naive to believe that other cultural subsets don’t engage in similar rhetoric, but it’s only the N-word people choose to ignore, as if to gain exploitative license (i.e., “Rappers use it, so why can’t we?”).
Hip hop artists, typically signed to White labels, represent a microcosm. They are given isolated platforms to use the N-word and vulgarity against Black women, but not against any other demographic.
It goes back to intentionality. Either we are a society that decides the N-word and other racist slurs aren’t permitted, or we aren’t. We shouldn’t engage in sport with this slur, used against people who endured the most dehumanizing, reprehensible and evil system ever to take place on American soil.
Slavery and Jim Crow comprised a 250-year period when Africans were shipped and sold as chattel; men, women and children were tortured, killed, raped, starved and mutilated; and families were torn apart and destroyed.
Racism defenders will ask, “Why do you people always have to talk about slavery and racism?” The current administration is determined to erase our history, and “those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it.”
Shame on BAFTA, its lackey Google and others for attempting to normalize the N-word.
MARTINA EVANS
Baltimore, Maryland
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