Inside the Engine Room: episode 3 of the Quiet Revolution
- brap
- 18 hours ago
- 5 min read
If you listen to conversations about anti-racism in organisations, you will often hear a familiar question: What should we do?
People want a checklist, toolkit, or set of actions that will move them from where they are to somewhere better. Racism is uncomfortable, politically charged and, for many leaders, professionally risky. Having a clear list of actions promises certainty. If we complete the steps, progress will follow.
But there is a problem.
The history of race work in organisations is already full of checklists. And yet the patterns we claim to be addressing remain stubbornly intact.
At brap we’ve spent more than two decades working inside organisations that genuinely want to change. Hospitals, charities, public bodies, funders. Across all of them we’ve noticed the same thing: progress stalls not because people lack good intentions, but because the work starts in the wrong place.
So, alongside activities, we stress the importance of focusing on certain principles and ensuring these run through anti-oppressive work in organisations and communities.
In the third episode of our podcast series, The Quiet Revolution, we paused the case studies and practical examples and took listeners inside what you might call the brap engine room – the ideas that shape how we approach anti-racism work.
Idea 1: Race is an idea – and a powerful one
One of the hardest starting points for people is also the most fundamental: race is not a biological fact; it’s a social construct. As our CEO, Joy Warmington, puts it in the podcast: “race is an idea – it’s not a fact – but it is a really powerful idea.”
That might sound abstract or academic, but it matters enormously. If we believe race is real in a biological sense, we inevitably begin to build explanations and interventions around supposed differences between groups. But if race is an idea – one that has been repeated, reinforced and institutionalised over centuries – then the problem shifts. The challenge becomes understanding how that idea continues to shape beliefs, behaviours, and decisions.
And the difficulty is that racialised thinking is deeply embedded in everyday life. As Cheryl Garvey notes in the episode, it’s so normalised that we often don’t even notice how strange it is as a way of assigning value to people:
We can’t underestimate how powerful it is as a way of thinking. Imagine if we decided someone’s worth or value based on their ear size. “Look at the size of that man’s earlobe – let’s gather the children in.” It sounds absurd. But race works in much the same way. Because it has been made real in so many ways and so deeply embedded in our institutions, we rarely notice how bonkers it is as a basis for deciding human value and worth.
Undoing that thinking isn’t a one-off moment of enlightenment. It’s something that has to be done again and again.
Idea 2: The norm that nobody notices
If race is the idea that structures the system, the next question is: who benefits from that system being seen as normal?
Much anti-racism work focuses on those who experience racism. We gather data about them, create programmes for them, and ask them to help design solutions. But this often leaves one crucial part of the system largely untouched – the norms that define what is considered ordinary, professional, credible or competent. In the podcast, Lakshnie Hettihewa explains this by drawing parallels with gendered violence:
If we think about gendered violence, the media often tells us women dressed a certain way, walked somewhere alone, or drank too much – as if those are the problems. What we don’t ask is whose behaviour actually needs attending to.
The same dynamic appears in race work. The people who experience racism are frequently treated as both the problem and the solution. Until we start examining the norms themselves, anti-racism efforts can unintentionally reinforce the very dynamics they are meant to challenge.
Idea 3: The problem with simple answers
This is the moment where many people start to feel frustrated. If race is socially constructed, if norms are hidden inside institutions, if systems reproduce inequality in subtle ways – then surely we need something practical to do about it.
And here is where organisations often reach for simplicity: a framework, a training programme, a set of targets.
But racism is not a simple problem. It is a complex system that adapts and evolves. Accepting that complexity can feel daunting. But it can also be liberating. It allows organisations to move beyond replication and start experimenting with approaches that respond to their own context.
Listen to a snippet of episode 3 of A Quiet Revolution
Idea 4: Symptoms and causes
A useful way of thinking about this is the difference between symptoms and causes.
Most equality work focuses on symptoms. Representation gaps, staff survey data, complaints and disciplinary patterns. These are important signals, but they are the visible effects of deeper dynamics.
If we only address the symptoms, we risk endlessly treating the consequences of racism without ever disturbing the system that produces them. As Cheryl explains in the podcast, organisations often see patterns and immediately try to correct the outcome rather than asking the more difficult question: what is creating that pattern in the first place?
Real change requires turning our attention to those deeper conditions.
Idea 5: This work belongs to everyone
Another persistent assumption in race work is that responsibility for change sits primarily with people who experience racism.
But if racism is a system – not simply a set of individual prejudices – then it cannot be dismantled by one group alone. Anti-racism requires coalitions.
Lakshnie Hettihewa describes this in the podcast as a collective call to action. Systems of oppression are powerful precisely because they divide people. Change happens when people recognise they are part of the same struggle and act together:
Racism is a system that is affecting all of us. And all of us need to be in the work of doing something about it… If we can truly understand, conceptually and in action, what it means to be together, then we are extremely powerful. Extremely powerful. All social movements have got somewhere because people were able to collectivise.
Understanding racism is not something people are born with. It is something we learn.
And if we can learn it, we can also learn to challenge it.
Idea 6: People forget the power they have
When people begin to see racism as systemic, another risk appears. The problem can start to feel overwhelming. Individuals start to believe the system is simply too big for them to influence.
But organisations are not abstract entities. They are made up of people making decisions every day – about hiring, funding, policies, priorities and behaviour. It is those decisions that shape the system.
Sometimes the shift that matters most is surprisingly small. A manager noticing something others have overlooked. A leader questioning a process that has always been taken for granted. Someone choosing to use their authority differently. As Lakshnie says in the episode, when people recognise their power and act on it, the effects ripple outward in ways we often can’t predict.
No shortcuts
The principles we discuss in the podcast are not a set of steps you can complete and move on from. They work more like a jigsaw puzzle: each piece reinforces the others. As Joy says, you can’t effectively challenge systemic oppression while still behaving as if race is a biological fact. You can’t disrupt power if you aren’t willing to build coalitions and recognise that this work belongs to all of us.
None of this offers the reassuring simplicity organisations often hope for.
But perhaps that’s the point.
If racism is a system that has evolved over centuries, we should probably be suspicious of any solution that claims it can be solved with a checklist.
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