I watched the British Academy Film and Television Arts Awards from a week or so ago, with my popcorn in hand, and a ginger ale. Before the night was over, my timeline was split clean down the middle. One side was arguing accountability. The other side said empathy. One side even was fighting for violence, and another, for context. And yet, somewhere in between all that digital jargon, was an act. And when stripped bare, replayed in loops over and over, slowed down, and meme-ified, you see how this situation became weaponized.
What unsettled me wasn’t just what happened on that stage or that night: it was what happened after.
Because two things can be true at the same time. A man can have a condition, yes. A man can have a history—trauma, PTSD, or something that you cannot visibly see. And an action, even when involuntary, can still be wrong or hurtful. Accountability does not erase humanity. Humanity does not erase consequence. But the internet does not make room for that kind of duality. That gray area. It demands a type of allegiance.
What felt about that—yes, sick—was how that allegiance the internet wanted out of us became a currency. Like how institutions pride themselves on decorum and artistry but know exactly how controversy fattens viewership. I feel as if the BAFTAs knew we’d (Black people) would clutch our pearls publicly, but privately we’d have an outrage that knew no other. And the BAFTAs, with their polished lighting and carefully timed pauses and cuts, were not naive to that. Because that wasn’t John Davidson’s first time ticking that night.
Yet, still, I couldn’t watch the discourse online without feeling something tugging on me.
Black men, who are so often the brunt of society’s projections, were the center of this awful moment. We are caricature in this understanding: a cautionary tale before an actual human being. In that moment, when Michael B. Jordan paused, he faltered, and it confirmed something for people waiting to be proven right. When we suffer, it is folded into a big show of a spectacle because why not watch the Black man be great? Why not let him be him? And, to me, it’s all about how there is rarely a space for fragility without punishment and rarely grace without suspicion.
None of this means we should excuse harm. It means we have to interrogate why certain harms can become defining for so many people.
The conversation becomes less about that and more about the nature of the act and who had a better argument. But this moment revealed something to all Black people, and you should take it with heed.
As a Black man watching, I knew what this moment showed me. The understanding that one misstep, one wrong horrible word, one moment, can become a stain on your life forever. That we are often asked to be ambassadors for an entire race while being denied the luxury of moving forward. That our anger will be feared, our vulnerability doubted and that situations like these will forever just be a topic of debate.
Two things can be true.
The act can be wrong.
The man can be more than his worst moment.
