Desmond Cole pierces Canada’s ‘feigned innocence’ on anti-black racism in new book

TORONTO — In his new book, “The Skin We’re In,” journalist and activist Desmond Cole chronicles the struggle against racism in Canada over the course of a single year — 2017 — from a police raid of a Toronto artist’s gallery on New Year’s Eve, to the campaign to halt a former Somali child refugee’s deportation through the end of December.

But Cole said there was nothing “special” about the 12-month period he chose to cover. It could have just as easily been set in 2020.

Today, the former freelance Toronto Star columnist is paying close attention to Justin Trudeau’s attempts to rehabilitate his image following revelations that the prime minister wore blackface and brownface on at least three occasions in his past.

As the scandal roiled the federal election campaign last fall, Trudeau acknowledged that wearing dark-skinned makeup was racist and apologized. He added that while he “should have known better,” he didn’t see his actions as racist “at the time.”

Cole doesn’t buy this plea of naivety, maintaining that Trudeau lacks the credibility to govern and should have resigned. But Cole wasn’t surprised that Trudeau stayed on as Liberal leader, or that Canadian voters re-elected him.

In Canada, he said, playing ignorant about racism is a national tradition.

“This is the game that we play in Canada: Where nobody knows that anti-black racism is wrong, yet everybody is so good at perpetuating it and excusing it,” Cole, 37, said in a recent interview.

“If we are to condemn Justin Trudeau for what he did, then white Canadians feel by association that all of their own prejudices, all of their own practices of anti-blackness will then come to account one day too.”

Cole rose to prominence in 2015 after writing a Toronto Life story titled “The Skin I’m In” about the dozens of times he’d been stopped and questioned by police. His article amplified a national conversation about the controversial practice of street checks, also known as carding, which research suggests disproportionately impacts racialized communities.

In “The Skin We’re In,” Cole widens his aperture in an effort to expose how racism is built into Canada’s foundation through the enslavement and disenfranchisement of black and Indigenous people.

Weaving the personal and political, he tracks how this history radiates through present-day Canadian institutions in the forms of economic disparity, over-incarceration, racial profiling in schools, gaps in the child-welfare system and selective immigration policies.

To make this case, however, Cole said he had to deconstruct Canada’s self-mythology of being a post-racial, polite counterpart to the U.S. He argues the country shares much more with its southern neighbour than most white Canadians would like to believe.

“There is a rage just beneath the surface of that feigned Canadian innocence,” he said. “It’s fear that black people are going to try to get revenge for the centuries of racism that have been enacted on us.”

The watchful eye of law enforcement looms over Cole’s account of 2017, weapons at the ready.

This gaze follows black people through their neighbourhoods, community spaces, schools, businesses and peaceful protests. But when surveillance doesn’t cut it, Cole said police are trained to “presume violence” in their interactions with black people.

In Cole’s view, that’s the reason black men like Andrew Loku, Jermaine Carby, Abdirahman Abdi and Pierre Coriolan died during encounters with police.

To write “The Skin We’re In,” Cole said he had to relive the struggles of 2017 in vivid detail, which took a personal toll. For many activists, the fight against racism can cause burnout, prompting some to drop out of the cause altogether, he said.

Cole punctuates his narrative with moments of black joy, communion and triumph. This is captured in the book’s only photo, which shows Black Lives Matter activists dancing in celebration after bringing 2017’s Toronto Pride Parade to a halt to demand more rights for racialized communities.

“This is really the life that we’re living, and in the joy and in the pain, I want us to at least see ourselves,” Cole said.

“The main audience for this book for me was absolutely black people … but it’s not just for black people. So I do hope that other audiences who see this book see that this is for them too.”

“If we get free, everybody will.”

“The Skin We’re In,” published by Doubleday Canada, hit shelves this week.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 29, 2020.

Adina Bresge, The Canadian Press