It’s cold again, cold cold, and we’ve had a little bit of snow. Only a dusting, I know some of you are dealing with feet of it.
I’m sorry. February can be so mean.
Walking to pick up take out on Saturday, pellets of ice hit my face, and I was confused because they hadn’t said anything about snow or rain or sleet. And that’s when it turned.
But I think it’s going to be warmer tomorrow.
Today I am thinking about the renaissance of open racism, overt racism, joyful racism, unabashed racism, public racism.
Let’s start from the same page. I am not implying or saying racism ever went away. It absolutely is always there, a moldy slime oozing from the walls, from mouths, radiating from thoughts, with people pretending they couldn’t see it as it dripped, dripped dripped from the ceiling into their coffee.
But until a certain person managed to slither his way into the White House there was a veneer about it which was necessary, because there could be social consequences. There weren’t always, and there frequently weren’t but people realized that being overt about it could cost them.
They affectionately called it “cancel culture.” Which doesn’t, apparently, extend to people who have participated in trafficking and abuse of women and girls but I don’t want to go too far afield here.
Once they managed to bulldoze their way through those barriers, though, they have made it clear that nothing they ever said that wasn’t racist was genuine. This goes for individuals and institutions and businessess.
If you were paying attention at all with the whole Harry and Meghan situation, you know that this isn’t solely a US phenomenon. I do think a history of colonization and museums full of things plundered from cultures that were deemed somehow “lesser” and yet special enough to actually have those things in museums could have been a bit of clue.
That field is beckoning again, let me bring myself back.
So maybe we shouldn’t be sitting here confused and conflicted about a BBC BAFTA broadcast that did not edit the use of a racial slur hurled at Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, two Black actors presenting, because really the pieces are all laid out.
And yet.
The BBC claims that the racial slur was shouted by a man with Tourette Syndrome, who had no ability to control himself. He apparently left the venue after but returned when the actor who played him in a movie won an award.
Even if we take that as true–that it was uncontrollable, an aspect of his disability, and nothing could be done to prevent it–and I don’t know enough about it to say one way or another, the BBC DOES have the ability to control what airs on a tape delay. And it didn’t cut the slur, not with the initial broadcast or with the rebroadcast, while it did cut someone else who made a political statement.
You can find it, I’m not getting in the weeds about the other statement. The point is that it demonstrates it would have been easy enough to do.
The BBC issued an “apology” that wasn’t much of an apology and as far as I know no one even asked the men targeted by the slur during a world-televised event to which they were invited and asked to present how they felt, if they were OK, what could be done to assuage what must have been a horrible moment for them.
By the way, Delroy Lindo appears to have confirmed my suspicion, saying no one from the BAFTA organization has reached out to him or Michael B. Jordan to apologize. Hannah Beachler, an Oscar-winning production designer also had the slur hurled at her, as did, apparently, a third Black woman according to that article.
Taking the disability out of the equation, there is no excuse for the BBC leaving such harmful language in the broadcast. Doing so looks like an endorsement, which is probably why they edited out the political speech.
And Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo are owed a proper, respectful apology, not the “it’s no one’s fault” garbage that was issued. It is absolutely the fault of the BBC.
I also wonder why the man with Tourette’s and the people around him weren’t more concerned about the risk of something like this, or the harm that he could do to someone. Yes, obviously we need to be mindful of people’s disabilities, but having a disability doesn’t excuse anyone from having consideration for others.
We are talking about two men at the stratosphere of success who were deeply insulted on a world stage. And the millions of other people who were also hurt by hearing that shouted, unedited, as though it was OK, it wasn’t a big deal.
This is long enough and I’m sure you get the point by now but to be clear, I am holding the BBC responsible for the choices it’s made in handling a horrible situation. I don’t know enough about the man who said it and his disability to judge how it happened.
It didn’t have to air. It was a choice to air it, twice.
And Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo didn’t deserve it in the moment, didn’t deserve it in the rebroadcast, and neither does anyone else the BBC actively decided to harm with the broadcast.
Have a great Monday. If you’re in the UK (or maybe Canada/Australia, not sure if they will count your post codes) please complain to the BBC about it. Americans can’t comment.
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