The Skin We're In

A Year of Black Resistance and Power

By: Desmond Cole

Narrated by: Desmond Cole

National Best Seller

Winner of the 2020 Toronto Book Award

A bracing, provocative, and perspective-shifting audiobook from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. The Skin We're In will spark a national conversation, influence policy, and inspire activists.

In his 2015 cover story for Toronto Life magazine, Desmond Cole exposed the racist actions of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times he had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The story quickly came to national prominence, shaking the country to its core and catapulting its author into the public sphere. Cole used his newfound profile to draw insistent, unyielding attention to the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis.

Both Cole’s activism and journalism find vibrant expression in his first book, The Skin We’re In. Puncturing the bubble of Canadian smugness and naive assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year - 2017 - in the struggle against racism in this country. It was a year that saw calls for tighter borders when Black refugees braved frigid temperatures to cross into Manitoba from the States, Indigenous land and water protectors resisting the celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, police across the country rallying around an officer accused of murder, and more.

The year also witnessed the profound personal and professional ramifications of Desmond Cole’s unwavering determination to combat injustice. In April, Cole disrupted a Toronto police board meeting by calling for the destruction of all data collected through carding. Following the protest, Cole, a columnist with the Toronto Star, was summoned to a meeting with the paper’s opinions editor and informed that his activism violated company policy. Rather than limit his efforts defending Black lives, Cole chose to sever his relationship with the publication. Then in July, at another police board meeting, Cole challenged the board to respond to accusations of a police cover-up in the brutal beating of Dafonte Miller by an off-duty police officer and his brother. When Cole refused to leave the meeting until the question was publicly addressed, he was arrested. The image of Cole walking out of the meeting, handcuffed and flanked by officers, fortified the distrust between the city’s Black community and its police force.

Month-by-month, Cole creates a comprehensive picture of entrenched, systemic inequality. Urgent, controversial, and unsparingly honest, The Skin We’re In is destined to become a vital text for anti-racist and social justice movements in Canada, as well as a potent antidote to the all-too-present complacency of many white Canadians.

©2020 Desmond Cole (P)2020 Doubleday Canada

Critic reviews

2020, Toronto Book Award, Winner

2021, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, Short-listed

2021. OLA Evergreen Award, Nominated

2021, Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing, Short-listed

"In The Skin We're In, Desmond Cole offers us not only analysis of one year of anti-blackness in the lands we currently call Canada: he also recovers disappeared histories of Black resistance, gives richly deserved credit to Black LGBTQ+ activists, shows solidarity with disabled and Indigenous folks, and, most importantly, reminds us of the power of Black genius and Black joy. This smart, powerful, essential book is an act of radical generosity - one we should all be grateful to receive, hold, share and revisit." (Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground)

"Desmond Cole systematically dismantles any lingering illusions of Canada as a beacon of racial benevolence by exposing the multiple forms of state violence facing Black peoples of all ages and genders. His text, further, compellingly highlights the ongoing refusal of Canada's Black diaspora to submit to conditions of subjugation, bringing to light both historical and contemporary legacies of rebellion. A powerful read." (Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present)

powerful and compelling

a powerful and compelling account of the systemic issues with the states monopoly on rights enforcement and justice. my only criticism is the authors surrender of capitalism as a "white institution/construct". The pre-colonial free markets of africa from great zimbabwe to timbuktu would beg to differ. ironically, socialism is the white institution/construct.

Power Packed and Vital

This is one of those books that every (settler, and especially white) canadian should read. It joins Thomas King’s - The Inconvenient Indian in my ‘essential list’. Powerful and confronting Cole manages to also share a beautiful picture of what true unity might achieve if only we (white people) acknowledge the truth of our history, present and impending future and fight to break the systems of oppression. As a true storyteller he honours the stories told and offers hope that it is difficult to fathom how he still manages to hold on to.
Excellent and essential.

A must read for ALL Canadians

A very thorough, difficult and uncomfortable analysis of anti-Black racism in Canada and all of its intersections including, Indigeneity, LGBTQ identities, ability, class, religion, sex and immigration status. Thank you Desmond Cole.

An eye opener

Being completely honest. I cried listening to this book. I can’t express enough how much Desmond Cole’s words and thorough, sharp research resonated with me as a young, black adult.