Over 300 people were in attendance for a conversation with Desmond Cole on Wednesday hosted by the Black Student Success Network. In it, Cole addressed pressing issues such as anti-Black racism, campus security, and the current state of policing.

Desmond Cole is an author, activist, and journalist who released his first book The Skin We’re In in 2020. The Skin We’re In shares personal anecdotes as well as statistics and reports on recent Black history and Black resistance around the Toronto area. As stressed throughout the talk, focusing on Toronto is necessary to him as he’s concerned with how many Canadians only see and react to anti-Black racism in America and do not believe it is as present in Canada.

“It’s not because something in the United States is seeping up here. It’s happening because your police have been doing this to us as long as there have been police,” says Cole “Because your institutions have been doing this to us for as long as there have been institutions in this country and we have to grapple with our unique expression of white supremacy in this country if we’re going to tackle and destroy it.”

Similar to the nature of his book, Cole opened the conversation with an anecdote related to Black History Month in Toronto. He cited a recent incident of anti-Black racism in a municipal office in the Greater Toronto Area. A weekly activity sheet highlighting ways to celebrate each day of Black History Month was sent to employees of Durham region. This activity sheet included tasks such as “dance to a reggae song” and “talk to a Black employee.” The activity sheet has since been discontinued after Cole spread the activity across social media, but he shares his concern about who is making these activity sheets.

“How can we be safe in a workplace where this climate of anti-Blackness is so normal and so accepted?” asks Cole.

The crux of the event was addressing the state of policing in Toronto, and Cole named those who have been killed in recent years by the police. This included Andrew Loku, a GBC graduate who was murdered by Toronto Police in 2015.

“George Brown campus in downtown Toronto is a place where everything that I am talking about is playing out every single day, said Cole “You don’t get an exclusion because you think in you’re heart ‘I’m a good person, I don’t believe in racism, I reject all of those things, I belong to a union that doesn’t believe in racism and rejects all of those things.’ Sorry. You gotta get real.”

Cole said this conversation is relevant to the college community because he believes that campus security is an extension of the police, and he believes they must also be defunded and abolished to ensure the safety and wellbeing of Black and Indigenous students, faculty, and support workers.

“Campus police in downtown Toronto, campus security in downtown Toronto, the Toronto police are doing to our Black students and Black faculty and Black support staff what police are doing out there that we are protesting against,” says Cole.

“They are making our lives here impossible. They are criminalizing us. And in the worst cases, they are taking out lives.”

He later asks, “When Black students on college and university campuses say no more campus police and no more campus security, what’s your response?”

This demand to get rid of campus police was made in the fall by the Student Association of George Brown College. They say they have yet to see a  response from the college, but Vice-President, HR and Public Safety and Security Leslie Quinlan said some of the security guards will be made into medical first responders and will wear a different shirt and medical patch to make them identifiable.

In the chatbox of the Zoom event, Chris McGrath, vice-president, student success said “community well-being and safety is a paradigm shift away from campus security that has to be explored.”

Among this discussion about campus security, Cole highlighted the nuances around diversity and inclusion-related committees. Cole felt it was essential to highlight the predominantly free labour that Black women do to improve institutions, but he also believes these committees stop institutions from turning their words into actions.

“White supremacy doesn’t want demands it wants to have an endless conversation,” says Cole.

In the end, Cole asserts that he doesn’t want people leaving with the idea that this has given them a lot to think about but rather leave knowing what immediate and ongoing actions are necessary.

“A safer campus for Black people is a safer campus for everybody,” says Cole.