"Racism is a public health issue," Oke notes.Britain cannot craft meaningful solutions to its current problems of systemic racism without coming to terms with its colonial past, particularly its role in developing the slave trade, Oke believes—the theme of historical reckoning being one that is echoed in the growing Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S. and other countries. She says, "Slavery existed since the dawn of time, but the specific trade and enslavement of Africans that America's wealth is built on and that Britain's modern wealth is built on came from Europe."

That's why it was especially symbolic when earlier this month protestors in Bristol, in southwest England, toppled a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston, heaving it into a nearby harbor. It wasn't the only statue to meet its demise in the protests. In London, a statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill was branded with the words "Churchill was a racist," just as Confederate statues in the U.S. have been pulled down or vandalized over the past few weeks.

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