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The skin we're in : a year of black resistance and power

Title: The skin we're in : a year of black resistance and power / Desmond Cole.
Author: Cole, Desmond, 1982-
Publication: Toronto : Doubleday Canada, [2020]

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	Sc E 20-663	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

Details

Description

246 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"In the tradition of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a bracing, provocative and perspective-shifting book 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 May 2015, the cover story of Toronto Life magazine shook Canada's largest city to its core. Desmond Cole's "The Skin I'm In" exposed the racist practices of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times Cole had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The story quickly came to national prominence, went on to win a number of National Magazine Awards and catapulted 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: the devastating effects of racist policing; the hopelessness produced by an education system that expects little of its black students and withholds from them the resources they need to succeed more fully; the heartbreak of those vulnerable before the child welfare system and those separated from their families by discriminatory immigration laws. Both Cole's activism and journalism find vibrant expression in his first book, The Skin We're In. Puncturing once and for all the bubble of Canadian smugness and naïve 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 African refugees braved frigid temperatures to cross into Manitoba from the States, racial epithets used by a school board trustee, a six-year-old girl handcuffed at school. 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 was 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 TPS meeting, Cole challenged the board publicly, addressing rumours of a police cover-up of 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, handcuffed and flanked by officers, out of the meeting fortified the distrust between the city's Black community and its police force. In a month-by-month chronicle, Cole locates the deep cultural, historical and political roots of each event so that what emerges is a personal, painful and 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."--

Alternative Title

Skin we are in

Subjects

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-243).

Additional Formats (note)

Issued also in electronic format.

Contents

Negro frolicks (January) -- Zero tolerance (february) -- Justice for abdirahman (march) -- Direct action (april) -- Deep breath (may) -- Honoured group (June) -- The unsettling (July) -- Here for dafonte (august) -- Uncontrolled movement (September) -- Women of exceptional merit (october) -- Community policing (november) -- Competing interests (december) -- Abdoul & fatouma (January).

Call Number

Sc E 20-663

ISBN

9780385686341
038568634X

LCCN

2019394174

OCLC

1082260321

Author

Cole, Desmond, 1982- author.

Title

The skin we're in : a year of black resistance and power / Desmond Cole.

Publisher

Toronto : Doubleday Canada, [2020]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-243).

Additional Formats

Issued also in electronic format.

Local Note

Schomburg copy with dust jacket.

Local Subject

Black author.

Research Call Number

Sc E 20-663

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