The N-Word at BAFTA | MiniPod
Native Land Pod
iHeartPodcasts and Reasoned Choice
4.8 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Davidson has tourettes, specifically “coprolalia,” a kind of vocal tic that causes a person to compulsively say socially inappropriate things. His condition exploded into public consciousness, first with a movie based on John Davidson’s life, and then again when John shouted the N-word at Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo at the BAFTA movie awards.
The unfortunate incident has elicited outrage from defenders of racial justice and the disabled community alike. Many folks online are putting the blame in the wrong place (and there is a place to put it). We can hold understanding for disabilities AND acknowledge the harm this language causes the Black community.
Our guest, Jumaane D. Williams, was the first person with tourettes to hold public office. He has served as Public Advocate since 2019, and as Council Member for the 45th District in Brooklyn beginning in 2010. He has passed more legislation than all previous Public Advocates combined.
Join our hosts Angela Rye, Andrew Gillum, and Bakari Sellers, along with guest-host Reecie Colbert.
If you’d like to submit a question, check out our tutorial video: http://www.instagram.com/reel/C5j_oBXLIg0/ and send to @nativelandpod.
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Native Land Pod is brought to you by Reasoned Choice Media.
Thank you to the Native Land Pod team:
Angela Rye as host, executive producer, and cofounder of Reasoned Choice Media; Andrew Gillum as host and producer, Bakari Sellers as host and producer, and Lauren Hansen as executive producer; LoLo Mychael is our research producer, and Nikolas Harter is our editor and producer. Special thanks to Chris Morrow and Lenard McKelvey, co-founders of Reasoned Choice Media.
Theme music created by Daniel Laurent.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Native Lampad is a production of IHeart Radio in partnership with Reason Choice Media. |
| 0:09.0 | Delaware and I are delighted to be presenting the first BAFTA of the night for a vital part of movie making. |
| 0:19.4 | We're here to us. |
| 0:22.5 | So we are beginning our mini pod today after watching the BAFTA Awards. |
| 0:29.3 | Last week we saw where a gentleman with Tourette syndrome yelled out. |
| 0:35.4 | Nigger is the word that he yelled out while Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were on presenting. |
| 0:42.7 | And what we wanted to do is ensure that we didn't have this conversation in isolation, in a vacuum. |
| 0:49.2 | And so we wanted to bring on our friend, New York public advocate, Jamani Williams, who is the only elected, |
| 0:56.5 | at the time he was elected, the only elected official in the country with Tourette's |
| 1:00.5 | syndrome. And he's talked about this online, but we also wanted to make sure that we bring |
| 1:05.3 | his thoughts to you. He told us he hadn't watched the video, so we just showed him the video. |
| 1:09.9 | And I'd love to get your initial reaction to that, Jamani. Also, happy Black History Month, so it sucks to be called |
| 1:15.5 | the N-word, Black History Month. But I do want to hear with your thoughts. Appreciate you. Happy American |
| 1:19.9 | History Month with a black lens on it. Like, it's a painful situation all the way around. |
| 1:30.5 | As you mentioned, I happen, you know, I've been black a pretty long time. |
| 1:34.9 | I've had Tourest syndrome for a long time, diagnosed in the ninth grade. |
| 1:37.2 | So the intersection there is interesting. |
| 1:38.7 | I also have corpulele. |
| 1:41.4 | So, and actually one of my ticks is the N-word. |
| 1:45.3 | Many people may not know because they're augmented, which we can also talk about for a while. And what's frustrating is I know there's a lot of anger and outrage which there |
| 1:50.9 | should be. What I've been trying to do in my post is make sure we put the anger in the right spaces |
| 1:55.3 | and the empathy in the right spaces and empathy has to go both ways. What was frustrating to me is that black folks always seem to be the ones that have to have |
... |
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