Notes from the BAFTAs
Shame in the room.
A few nights ago, watching the BAFTAs, something uncomfortable happened.
A racial slur was spoken aloud while two celebrated Black actors stood on stage.
Later, it was explained that the speaker lives with Tourette syndrome - a neurological condition that can, in some cases, include involuntary utterances.
So we were left in a complicated space.
Harm without intent.
Inclusion meeting rupture.
A room unsure how to breathe.
This is where shame lives.
There was a time, not long ago, when people with disabilities were kept out of public life.
Hidden away.
Institutionalised.
Excluded from schools, theatres, workplaces, and stages.
Their difference was treated as something to be managed privately rather than lived publicly.
Their presence was seen as discomforting, inconvenient, or shameful.
Inclusion is a relatively recent social achievement.
Award ceremonies are rituals of belonging.
Kings and queens of culture walk the red carpet.
Actors, activists, writers, musicians - all dressed in their best selves, gathering to say:
You matter.
You belong.
You are seen.
That is the opposite of shame.
Shame says:
You should not be here.
You are unworthy.
You do not belong.
A space of belonging.
A space from which people with Tourette’s like him were long excluded.
A space that says: You are welcome here.
A space that invites him in.
He carries into that room a lifetime of experience - a lifetime shaped by shame.
The small humiliations of childhood.
The stares of teachers.
The jokes on buses.
The exclusions - repeated often enough to become embodied.
That sense that he is somehow too much, or not quite enough, unwelcome, undeserving. The intensely painful experience of believing we are flawed, and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.
And yet here he is.
On the red carpet.
In the room.
And then, from his body, involuntarily, comes a word.
A word heavy with centuries.
A word shaped by slavery, segregation, humiliation, exclusion.
A word that has carried intergenerational shame through Black communities across generations.
The room freezes.
Because now two truths collide.
One person whose neurological condition makes speech unpredictable.
Two men whose lives - and whose art - carry the weight of racial history.
Both truths are real.
Both contain shame.
If shame is already in the room, the question is not how to remove it.
The question is whether we can stay long enough to name what has happened, and care for each other in the aftermath.
Whether we can build spaces - in schools, in therapy rooms, in organisations, in award ceremonies - where belonging is strong enough to survive moments like this.
Repair begins when the moment is named, the hurt is honoured, and people reach toward each other in the light.
