Ashley Banjo 'stands by' BGT dance amid backlash and vicious racist abuse

Diversity's Ashley Banjo has taken to Instagram to address the vicious backlash over the BLM routine the dance troupe performed on Britain's Got Talent.

The anti-racism performance sparked 15,000 complaints, but father-of-two Ashley insisted the response was mostly positive and said he will never be anything but proud of the performance.

"I just wanted to do a video to address some issues, it's been a crazy week and I have been a bit quiet on social been living life, trying not to get caught up in it all, but now I feel is the time to come out and say a few things," he began.

"Firstly, I want to say thank you, for all the people who have supported what me and Diversity did with our performance, they have reached out.

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"Honestly, it is overwhelming, the positive reaction to what we did, hundreds of thousands of messages, comments, DMs and interactions in the street.

"I know a lot of the press reports have been about the complaints and the negativity, which there has been a lot – there’s has been what, 15, 16,000 complaints, a lot of negativity thrown back at the performance.

"Trust me, I am right in the centre of it and the negativity is is the minority.

"The positive response has been huge, so thank you so much to everyone who has supported, shown love and stood by what we did."

He also thanked everyone who had reached out to Diversity to check they were OK, and insisted they were.

"We are feeling positive, proud, happy, confident and we stand by every single decision we made with that performance," he said.

Heartbreakingly, Ashley said he was receiving vicious abuse following the routine: "Everything from racial abuse, to threats, to just some really nasty stuff."

He went on: "I am not going to give it any more time than it deserves, but a lot of the negativity all of the nastiness and the racism shows exactly why this performance was needed and exactly why this conversation has now arisen from it is necessary.

"Racism is very real, especially after this performance, I knew it before, and I definitely know it now."

But he added that Diversity are happy they started the conversation and its a price he is willing to pay.

He also explained the powerful performance and what it represented, saying: "The performance was a round-up of an extraordinary year, anything from lockdown, to COVID, to the incredible NHS, to the spotlight that has been shone on racism – everything that happened with George Floyd in America, the protests, the riots, culminated in the idea of unity, hope.

"People looking back, hindsight 2020 – that is what the performance was about, it was layered, we wanted to give people hope and not shy away from difficult issues.

"This is a year that will go down in history for positive and negative reasons.

"The bit that really seemed to connect with people and agitate and annoy and offend some people is the fact that we stood up and said that racism is real, and as far as we are concerned, it has to change and it will not be tolerated, because Black Lives Matter."