Desmond Cole

Desmond Cole is a Canadian journalist, radio host, author, and activist whose reporting confronts anti-Black racism in policing, education, immigration, and public life. The Skin We’re In chronicles events from 2017 while combining personal experience, historical context, and accounts of organized resistance. Cole challenges the familiar claim that Canada is naturally more equitable than the United States, showing how institutions produce unequal treatment and how Black communities contest it. Doubleday Canada published the book in 2020, and an updated Anchor Canada edition added a foreword, postscript, and educator’s guide. The work won the Toronto Book Award and the Ontario Library Association’s Evergreen Award. It developed from years of journalism and activism, including Cole’s widely discussed writing about being repeatedly stopped by police. His move from conventional reporting toward direct participation is part of the book’s argument: neutrality can conceal structures that deserve scrutiny. The Skin We’re In remains both a record of one year and a call to recognize longer histories of Black resistance in Canada.