Happy Last Tuesday of Black History Month Reader!
I wasn’t planning to write about this.
But this is what community does. We pay attention to the moments everyone else is reacting to, and we slow them down.
Sunday evening, as Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo stood on stage at the 79th ceremony hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), the N-word was shouted from the audience.
The outburst was the result of vocal tics associated with Tourette’s. The impact was immediate, and the moment later aired on the BBC.
Unintentional AND harmful.
Both can be true at the same time.
When layered human realities collide in public spaces, leadership is revealed. In what happened AND how it was handled.
Who was centered?
Who was checked on?
What was said?
What was delayed?
This is where A More HUMAN Approach™ could have helped.
Honest
Say what happened clearly.
A racial slur was heard on a global stage.
It was connected to a neurological condition.
It caused harm.
Clarity is the beginning of repair.
Urgent
Urgency is relational.
Who needed care in that moment?
Who received it first?
What was reviewed immediately?
Silence communicates something, even when it is by default.
Meaningful
Meaningfulness asks about impact.
Who absorbed the weight of that moment?
What history makes that word land the way it does?
What was this ceremony meant to signal?
Intent does not erase impact.
Accountable
Accountability asks about responsibility.
Who owns the response?
Who ensures repair happens?
Who strengthens the safeguards going forward?
Accountability is about people, not optics.
Nuanced
This was a moment where disability and race intersected in public.
It is possible to affirm the dignity of people living with Tourette’s and also affirm the harm carried by racial language.
We do not have to choose one truth over the other.
Nuance requires maturity.
Most of you are leaders. Some of you are shaping culture in rooms that never make headlines.
Most harm does not begin with malice.
It begins with unexamined complexity.
Preparation is an act of care.
When complexity shows up, we can default. Or we can respond with intention.
Pause. Notice. Decide.
That’s the practice.
I’m building a leader-facing newsletter that spends more time inside the HUMAN framework. If you’d like to be part of that community, you can join here: https://bit.ly/HUMANNewsletter
We're still a few weeks out from the first message, but you can opt-in early.
LOVE first. Always,
TJae
