Be Hard on Systems, Gentle on People

At the recent BAFTA awards, John Davidson, a man living with coprolalia Tourette’s, shouted a racial slur as Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan presented an award. The N-word was audible in the BBC broadcast. The harm was immediate. The actors and many in the audience were understandably shaken.

Afterwards, the award ceremony's host, Alan Cumming, and the BBC, explained the context behind the obscenities. Despite these explanations, social media posts and videos debated whether the BBC, BAFTA, or Davidson himself had done enough to prevent harm.

The internet wanted a villain. But there wasn't one.

The N-word was uttered as an involuntary tic due to a neurological disorder. While the BBC could have edited the slur out before the broadcast, it wouldn’t have mitigated the harm experienced by the two Black American actors. So the victims were clear. But the perpetrator was not.

In the midst of the internet debate, Tressie McMillan Cottom posted, "One thing we don't do well, societally or interpersonally, is digest harms where there really isn't anyone to blame."

But what do we do with harm like this? This question feels especially relevant after I was recently laid off. When I first received the news, I worried about health insurance as I'm still recovering from anemia. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about my residency status or housing.

But the news was deeply destabilizing. And I wanted someone to blame. I wanted to blame the manager who delivered the news. But she wasn't to blame. She was doing her job. And she also has a family who depend on her paycheck.

I wanted to paint the CEO as a villain. He could have reduced his million dollar compensation package to prevent these layoffs. But the math simply doesn't math. An executive salary simply doesn't compare to the salaries of a thousand people.

Yes, he could have decided against the layoffs. But the CEO is beholden to shareholders, market pressures, and a board. And when tens of thousands of people are being laid off across the technology industry, layoffs seem like the obvious choice. The system constrains the kinds of options any one manager or CEO can make. So again, the harm is very real yet there is no one to blame.

But there are systems that create real victims without clear perpetrators.

In scenarios like this, my dear friend Don often reminds me to "be hard on systems and be gentle on people."

But this simple aphorism is hard to practice. Rather than directing my justified anger at a person, I must look at systems and ask difficult questions like why is my health insurance tied to employment? Why are layoffs happening in the technology industry? Why is there such a limited safety net in the United States?

These questions have complex systemic answers but no clear action. If there is a person to blame, then there is someone to hold accountable. The aphorism asks something harder of me. To be critical of systems, and to sit with the slow, unglamorous work of changing them, without the satisfaction of a face to blame. And that is the hard work of digesting harm.