I don’t think anger should be aimed at the BBC for broadcasting the N-word (I was at the Baftas – and while hearing the N-word was unsettling, all anger should be aimed at the BBC, 25 February). As the mother of a mixed-race teenager with Tourette syndrome, I cannot express how sad I am that taking offence at a tic has been justified.
My son’s education has been derailed – a teacher took offence at a tic (eye rolling) and he was so humiliated that he left the school. Controversially, I disagree that the N-word should have been edited out in the BBC broadcast. We need to understand the implications of finding someone’s disability offensive.
I don’t worry about my son saying the N-word as he is not white. My son, who is now home-schooled, frequently heard the N-word directed at him at school. By editing out the word we are teaching children that adults can be offended by tics, that tics have meaning and that we have the right to judge tics. We are shying away from the fact that tics can be horrifically socially awkward. Bearing witness to my son’s tics has been hellish.
I am so grateful to John Davidson for raising awareness. I hope those who wish to present the condition in a different light (with edits) will talk to black children with vocal tics and appreciate the need for the condition to be understood in its entirety. I’m so sad that this wasn’t an opportunity to show compassion and raise awareness.
Name and address supplied
Jason Okundaye’s article regarding the backlash after John Davidson’s outburst at the Baftas was one of the most balanced reactions I have read. He perfectly understood the issues and could genuinely see the problem from both sides.
I saw I Swear at the cinema and found it shocking, funny and incredibly moving. It certainly helped me to understand the condition more fully. Long before I’d seen the film, however, my husband was attending our local hospital. He had been diagnosed with a serious heart condition and, as we walked into the hospital early one morning, a man was walking out. He looked at my husband and said loudly and clearly: “Your number’s up!”
I don’t know for certain that he had Tourette syndrome, but it would seem very likely. We walked on, but our reaction was one of uncontrollable mirth. It was so funny that it put us both in a good mood. The man actually did us a favour, if only he’d known it.
I’m not black so I can’t possibly say how I’d feel if someone was to blurt out a racial slur in my presence, but I do hope that people will show some compassion for Davidson. Living with the condition must be incredibly difficult and he deserves our sympathy and understanding.
Kathleen Macpherson
Thornhill, Stirlingshire
In Peter Bradshaw’s write-up of the Baftas (25 February), he described John Davidson, the Tourette syndrome campaigner, as someone “who has struggled throughout his life both with his condition and with people’s attitudes”.
I would put it a different way: it is society that struggles to understand and accept people with that condition and many others, and this creates attitudinal barriers that disable those people. Describing it in those terms moves the emphasis away from individuals “overcoming” their conditions and towards all of us becoming better educated. That is the core message of the film, which will hopefully be amplified by its deserved Bafta success.
David Araya
Leeds
To my mind, there is no more indicative story of how our society treats disabled people than the current row about John Davidson’s tics at the Baftas.
I do not wish to deny that the word he shouted is abhorrent, but the academy awarding an able-bodied actor for portraying a disabled man while we criticise the disabled man that he portrayed for his involuntary tics is clear recognition that the world is perfectly happy to profit from sanitised versions of disabled lives, while turning a blind eye to the reality of what it means to know and support disabled people.
Navigating the world with a disability (I am a full-time wheelchair user) is to constantly have to negotiate the emotional and physical responses of others to your disability, to deal with slurs, unwanted attention and the constant labour of helping able-bodied people feel comfortable in your presence. To be disabled in the workplace, moreover, requires the constant negation of the difficulties you face for fear that you’ll simply be classed as “too much effort” if you ask for even the most basic adjustments.
Until abled-bodied people become willing to encounter disability in more nuanced ways than just the “inspirational” stories told about us in mainstream media, it is we who will continue to face not only the difficulties of being disabled in a world that rejects us, but also having to navigate the way in which the reality of our existence all too often offends those who say they understand.
Dr Anna Wall
Lecturer in literature, University of York
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