5Cs to shift the dial on Inclusion in 2023 I remember once being in a queue at a newsagent in Croydon when a gentleman approached me with the excitement of someone who had just discovered they were the heir to a huge fortune and said, “This is the end of racism!”. It was the 5th of November 2008 and like many around the world, viewers in the UK (myself included) had been glued to their screens to see Barack Obama declared first black president of the United State of America. The promise of that historic event was reflected in the hope on this man’s face. “Well, the beginning of the end”, I replied. Looking back on that day more than 14 years ago and thinking of the deeper concerns around the race conversation in the USA and around the world, I was right to temper my optimism with caution.
Since then, there has been a greater outcry and most objective observers admit that event has done little to shift the dial on racial equity. The moments that are at first seen as watersheds become fleeting at best, leading us all to doubt that true change is possible. These sentiments are not new; they are reflected in the words of writer Jean-Baptise Alphonse Karr (“la plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”) which written in English mean, “the more things change the more they stay the same”. The same can be said of the increased conversation that
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