Boxing rings and rollercoasters: Episode 4 of The Quiet Revolution
- brap
- Mar 24
- 5 min read
Once equality conversations move from policy into practice, something happens. The neat language of equality strategies gives way to something far more complicated. Organisations that pride themselves on doing good begin to encounter a messier reality – one where good intentions are not always enough.
This is the story we explore in episode 4 of our podcast series, The Quiet Revolution.
It begins with a simple observation from Mabinty Esho at Comic Relief.
“I think everyone just wants an easy day at work, right? People come in to do their job. I just assumed because it’s the right thing to do there wouldn’t be any issues. Everyone would buy into it. It would all be plain sailing. It would be sort of a kumbaya moment – very naïve, I know.”
That expectation will sound familiar to many organisations. If the cause is just and the intentions are sincere, surely the work should unfold smoothly.
But anti-racism rarely works like that.
When values meet reality
Comic Relief is one of the UK’s best known charities. For decades it has been associated with the idea that collective action can tackle poverty and injustice around the world. A few years ago, the organisation began asking a more uncomfortable question. What if the work of justice does not begin out there, but inside your own organisation?
For CEO Samir Patel, the decision to explicitly commit to anti-racism grew out of Comic Relief’s broader diversity strategy:
Our strategy had a number of pillars – inclusive culture, diverse representation and anti-racism. The reason we focused on anti-racism is partly because it’s the right thing to do and partly because of our vision of a just world free from poverty. We’re often working with communities that are marginalised, and we know people from racialised backgrounds are more likely to be impacted by poverty.
At the same time, conversations across the international aid sector were shifting. Questions about power, privilege, and the legacy of colonialism were becoming harder to ignore.
In that context, diversity and inclusion began to feel like only part of the picture. As Samir reflects:
Diversity can feel easier and safer. Of course organisations should be more diverse. Of course people should feel they belong. But when you move into anti-racism and whiteness, that becomes something very different. It becomes emotional and political.
And that shift changes the atmosphere inside organisations.
The moment the work becomes real
Many organisations discuss racism at a strategic distance. It appears in policy documents or board conversations, framed through data and action plans. But the real test comes when those ideas move into the room.
Samir remembers the first time Comic Relief held an anti-racism session with colleagues.
I remember sitting there thinking, this is uncomfortable. I bet people feel quite uncomfortable with this. It felt very different from the DEI work I had done before.
Yet the experience looked very different from the perspective of the person responsible for holding that space. For Mabinty, Comic Relief’s Head of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, the first session carried a particular weight.
I felt incredibly nervous. I felt like all eyes were on me as a Black woman leading this work and encouraging a predominantly white organisation to engage with anti-racism. I felt quite exposed, if I’m being honest.
She was conscious of the expectations in the room – from global majority colleagues who hoped the work might finally name experiences they had long carried, and from white colleagues who were unsure where the conversation might lead. But something unexpected happened.
There was a lot of laughter in the room. We were talking about very serious issues, but there was engagement and energy. At one point you couldn’t even shut us up.
The humour helped people stay present in conversations that might otherwise have become overwhelming. But it did not remove the deeper challenge the work was beginning to reveal.
Listen to a snippet of episode 4 of The Quiet Revolution
When the workshop ends
Many organisations imagine anti-racism work as something that happens inside training sessions. In reality, the most difficult part often begins afterwards. That is when the ideas people have encountered begin interacting with everyday relationships and hierarchies.
Samir noticed this shift as colleagues began processing the work in different ways:
You have colleagues from the global majority feeling validated – like, yes, you’re naming something I’ve experienced. And then they’re looking at white colleagues and senior leaders saying, ‘Why aren’t you doing more?’
At the same time, some white colleagues were grappling with their own discomfort.
Some felt like they were being painted as the problem and they found that difficult.
This tension is common when organisations begin confronting systemic issues. The emotional weight often falls heavily on the people tasked with leading the work. For Mabinty, the experience sometimes feels like stepping into a boxing ring:
A colleague once described it as getting knocked out in the ring but having to come back the next day and fight again. That honestly resonates with me... It's an emotional rollercoaster: there are a lot of issues, a lot of mess, a lot of challenges, but there's also been a level of repair within that and thinking about how we stay in the work and continue in the work, even though for some, our views differ.
A boxing ring and a rollercoaster. Let's just stay with those two images for a moment. The first speaks to the sheer exhaustion, the feeling of being knocked down and having to find the strength to get back up day after day. The second speaks to the chaos and the mess, but also crucially to the possibility of repair.
The quieter signs of change
Progress in anti-racism work rarely arrives in dramatic breakthroughs. More often it appears in small shifts – a conversation that would not have happened before, a moment where someone notices something they once overlooked. Samir has begun to see some of those changes inside Comic Relief.
I’ve seen senior white leaders call out bias in situations where that didn’t happen before. I’ve seen people intervene in conversations. I’ve seen colleagues say openly that they’re not sure they’d want to bring a friend into the organisation’s culture. Those conversations weren’t happening a few years ago.
For Mabinty, sometimes the signs are quieter still.
When I started, hardly anyone talked about race across the organisation. Now almost everyone has been through anti-racism training. People are more aware of microaggressions and more willing to call them out.
They may seem like modest shifts, but they mark a change in how people understand the culture around them.
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