What we are prepared to name
What we are prepared to name
Shannon Rivers, BITC’s Director of Inclusion and Wellbeing Advisory, responds to the UN resolution to recognise the slave trade as the gravest crime in human history.
There are moments when the question is no longer: What happened?, but: What are we prepared to name?
Recently, at the United Nations, a delegate from Ghana asked for a line to be drawn: that the transatlantic slave trade be recognised as the gravest crime in the history of humanity.
123 countries agreed, with a small number opposing and others abstaining.1 Not because the history is unclear, but because naming it this plainly makes the present harder to defend.
What a word has to hold
The transatlantic slave trade is often positioned as history: something bounded, contextual, complete. But this was not an episode. It was a system.
Over four centuries, an estimated 12–15 million African people were forcibly taken, with millions more dying during the Middle Passage.2 The system that enabled this did not operate at the margins, it sat at the centre of emerging global economies, shaping patterns of labour, capital, and ownership that continue to define opportunity today.3
As has been widely reported following the resolution, this was not a symbolic act alone. The declaration explicitly links the transatlantic slave trade to ongoing structural inequality and calls for frameworks of reparatory justice.4
This matters. Because it disrupts the idea that this is solely about the past.
The resistance and what it reveals
The opposition to the resolution did not centre on disputing the history. It centred on implication. Public reporting highlighted three core concerns:
These are not historical arguments. They are contemporary ones. They speak to what naming requires, not just morally, but materially. Because to call something the gravest crime is to do more than describe it. It is to locate it.
To acknowledge scale. To recognise intent. To confront legacy. And that unsettles the systems, wealth, and structures that were built from it and are still intact.
From global moment to workplace reality
It would be easy to position this as geopolitical, something that sits at the level of states and international institutions. But the pattern is familiar. Because the same dynamics show up inside organisations.
Meanwhile, colleagues are already holding the reality of it. Not as theory, but as lived experience.
The impact inside teams
When something is widely understood but not clearly named, it creates a particular kind of strain. Colleagues who experience racial inequality are often navigating two things at once: the experience itself and the absence, or softening, of language around it.6
That absence is not neutral.
Where there is no shared clarity:
Over time, this shows up in ways organisations recognise: lower psychological safety, reduced engagement, slower progression, and higher attrition.7 We see this in the evidence from Business in the Community’s (BITC) Race at Work research as well as employer insights.8
This is where inclusion and wellbeing converge. Because the cost of not naming something is not only cultural — it is human.
Why this connects to BITC’s Race at Work campaign
Through the Race at Work campaign, we have consistently emphasised that race equity requires more than awareness. It requires:
What this moment demonstrates, at a global level, is the same principle. That there is a difference between knowing something and naming it, and that progress often stalls in the space between the two.
Naming the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime in the history of humanity is not an overstatement — it is an overdue alignment with the scale, intent, and enduring impact of the system itself.
The leadership edge
For leaders, this is not about having perfect language. It is about recognising where language is being softened in ways that limit progress.
Where we say:
And what that does, intentionally or not, is create distance. Distance from responsibility. Distance from impact. Distance from change.
A moment to pause and look inward
Nothing material changed this week.
No reparations.
No redistribution.
No immediate structural shift.
But something was said that had been resisted for centuries. And once something is named this clearly, it becomes harder to pretend we do not understand it.
So, perhaps, the question for organisations is not: What do we think about this?, but: Where, in our own systems, are we still choosing language that allows us to acknowledge harm without accepting its consequences?
And what might shift, for our people, for our culture, for our outcomes, if we were willing to name things as they are?
What we do with this
Clarity does not resolve everything. But without it, very little moves. So, the question for leadership is not whether this moment matters. It’s what we are prepared to do with it.
If you’re considering what this means for your organisation, whether in relation to race equity, inclusion, or the wellbeing of your people, your Relationship Manager can support you in shaping the next steps. Or you can contact the Advisory team directly at advisory@bitc.org.uk to continue the conversation.
