Learning from The Skin We're In

 

The increase in awareness of racial injustice since the murder by police of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis in late May has prompted me to do more exploring of the subject, including in my reading. The issues affecting Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) have been on my personal radar for decades, in no small part because the United Church of Canada has attempted to address them. We are a predominantly white denomination, which may say something about how well we've addressed racism and multi-culturalism, but we have not been blind to what has been brought to the fore through Black Lives Matters and other groups.

In my reading I've worked my way through two excellent books by Isabel Wilkerson, the latest being Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Wilkernson is an American writer, and I felt I needed to listen to a Canadian voice as well. Yesterday I finished The Skin We're In by Toronto journalist and activist, Desmond Cole. Cole does balk somewhat at being described as an activist yet that's the way I see him and an effective one at times. 

The book,  was not an easy one for me to read, even though it is well written. Cole focuses on a year in his life, 2017, and describes, month by month, the realities of racism in "Toronto the Good" and beyond, and how he was involved in responding. It was difficult because as an aging white guy I'm unsettled by the prospect of systemic racism in this country. As with so many of us, I'd prefer to feel superior to the United States rather than listening to BIPOC voices which tell me otherwise. And Cole is blunt, unrelenting, to the extent that other Black people have suggested that he take the edge off his rhetoric and activity so that he isn't alienating potential allies. 

More than once I figured I'd had enough, thank you, I'd got the gist. I'm glad I persevered though, not as an act of white guilt self-flagellation but because I learned a lot about situations in that year which were reported from a media perspective which leaned toward the "powers that be." I do feel that Cole's voice is a prophetic one, and as I've often pointed out, the biblical prophets in both Older and Newer Testaments, "comforted the afflicted, and afflicted the comfortable."