When Inclusion Gets Complicated: Race, Disability and that BAFTAs Moment.

By Samantha Stimpson

During the ceremony, Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson involuntarily shouted the N-word while actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting an award. Davidson, who lives with Tourette syndrome, later said he was deeply mortified by what happened and left the auditorium once he realised the distress his vocal tic had caused.

I watched it live and for me, and for many viewers, the moment was shocking. For others, it was confusing, and for many people working in inclusion, the public conversation that followed revealed something deeper about how we respond when different aspects of identity collide in public life.

Because what unfolded afterwards was not simply a debate about one moment at an awards ceremony. It was a struggle with complexity.

In the immediate aftermath, the conversation quickly split into opposing camps.

Some people focused on the harm caused by hearing a word that carries a long and painful history of racism and violence for many Black people.

Others focused on the neurological reality of Tourette syndrome, a condition that can include involuntary vocal tics — sometimes including words or phrases the individual does not intend and cannot control.

Both of these realities are true. The impact of racist language is real. The neurological nature of Tourette syndrome is also real.

Yet public conversations often struggle to hold both truths at the same time. Instead, we look for a single explanation, a clear villain, or a simple narrative that resolves the discomfort.

But inclusion rarely offers simple narratives, more often, it asks us to hold complexity.

One of the most striking aspects of the reaction to the BAFTAs moment was how quickly people felt compelled to take a position.

Was this racism?

Was this disability?

Whose experience should take priority?

These questions reveal a common trap in public discourse: the belief that acknowledging one form of harm means dismissing another.

Inclusion work challenges this idea. It asks us to recognise that human experiences and identities intersect in ways that cannot always be neatly separated.

As writer and activist Audre Lorde famously said:

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

Moments like this remind us what this means.

Intersectionality, a concept developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, helps us understand how different aspects of identity, race, disability, gender, class and others, intersect and shape people’s experiences.

Importantly, intersectionality is not about ranking injustices or deciding which experience matters more. It is about recognising that the world is more complicated than the narratives we often use to explain it.

As someone who is both a person of colour from the Global Majority, and someone who lives with a non-visible disability, I resist and resent conversations that demand we choose one identity over another.

Because real life doesn’t work like that. Identities overlap, experiences intersect, and situations often require us to hold multiple truths at the same time. Not easy but necessary.

While individuals wrestle with complexity, institutions have a responsibility to respond with care. Moments like this test leadership. They require thoughtfulness, clarity and compassion for everyone affected , the individual with the disability, the people harmed by the language, and the wider audience trying to make sense of what happened.

Questions have since been raised about whether the broadcast delay could have allowed the word to be edited out before transmission, and whether the situation was handled with enough care for everyone involved.

These are difficult moments for any organisation and could the BBC have handled this better? In my opinion yes, as they are an organisations committed to inclusion. This was an opportunity for them to demonstrate what inclusive leadership looks like when things don’t go according to plan. Lessons to be learnt here for sure!

If there is one key lesson for inclusive leaders from the BAFTAs moment, it may be this:

Inclusion is not about having all the answers. It is about developing the capacity to sit with complexity.

To acknowledge harm without rushing to blame.

To extend compassion without dismissing pain.

To hold multiple truths without collapsing them into a single story.

That is not easy. But it is the work. And moments like this remind us that inclusion is not simply about policies or statements. It's about how we respond when real life refuses to fit neatly into our frameworks.