We are not all the same; we don't think alike; and we have the right to openly express those differences in ways that, hopefully, will contribute to our community's welfare. Michael Eric Dyson More Quotes by Michael Eric Dyson More Quotes From Michael Eric Dyson We should not be post-racial: seeking to get beyond the uplifting meanings and edifying registers of blackness. Rather, we should be post-racist: moving beyond cultural fascism and vicious narratives of racial privilege and superiority that tear at the fabric of "e pluribus unum. Michael Eric Dyson tears uplifting moving He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all, he was more than the sum of his artistic parts. Michael Eric Dyson rap hip-hop may I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them. Michael Eric Dyson odds kings thinking I'm in bed, so to speak, more with those people who consider themselves atheists but who are concerned about the same things, ideas, and politics I'm concerned with than those who claim to be religious in the same way that I am but have no interest in the political reorganization of society, which needs to be talked about from the pulpit. Michael Eric Dyson atheist religious ideas I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.' Michael Eric Dyson church want people I think it's extremely important to challenge white brothers and sisters and think more systematically and strategically about the whiteness that they possess. Michael Eric Dyson brother white thinking [ Mrs. James, my fifth-grade teacher] introduced us to these authors early on and taught us that their literature is important. Langston Hughes - we read his poetry. We studied who W.E.B DuBois was. And so she whetted our appetites. Michael Eric Dyson taught-us important teacher I have argued tirelessly, nearly endlessly, in so many books, about the need for the social, the economic reconstruction of society. The demand that people be present themselves, that they contribute to the reorganization of society, that they own up to their own complicity in a system from which they derive benefit and advantage, often without acknowledgement, and the discomfort, the uncomfortable way in which that must be acknowledged. Michael Eric Dyson demand book people The language of faith is crucial because it affords human beings the privilege of intimacy with the ultimate. Michael Eric Dyson intimacy privilege language I guess I'm a Luddite. Michael Eric Dyson What disturbs or assures us about race has very little to do with blood or biology. Race is about how you use language, understand your heritage, interpret your history, identify with your kin, figure out what your meaning and worth to a society that places values on you beyond your control. And it's also about what people see you as - or take you to be. Michael Eric Dyson race blood people The only way for white folks to reclaim the full arc of their humanity, the full trajectory of their ethical content, of their ethical identity, is to surrender the white innocence that prevents them from being fully mature. Michael Eric Dyson identity humanity white All Americans deserve an equal crack at what it means to be a - having - having resources in your own home and in your state and in your country. Michael Eric Dyson home mean country Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn't political and racist in refusing to worship with us. Michael Eric Dyson brother white america Bill Cosby is a famous black guy who has a bully pulpit the size of the world; it's global. He puts his colossal foot on the vulnerable necks of poor people, and as a result of that, we don't have a balanced conversation. Michael Eric Dyson bully feet people Whiteness itself is artifice, is fiction, is a construction, is narrative, is myth. And I seek to deconstruct all of that, to challenge the accretion, the intellectual accretion, the philosophical secretion that generates within the edifice of white supremacy that allows people easy escape, and egress. And I'm saying, "No, you can't leave now. You cannot afford to not know what I'm talking about, because you gotta be held accountable." Michael Eric Dyson philosophical white talking If you take a guy like a Barack Obama, who's raised millions of dollars from the most donors in the history of this nation, it suggests that there's a deep and profound hunger for a new politics to come forth. And a guy like him has been able to mobilize that and to reach certain parts of the hip-hop generation. Michael Eric Dyson hip-hop guy profound When people are not sure about their future, when their economies are suffering, when their personal fortunes are flagging, we have often in this country turned to nativism and xenophobia and racism and anti-immigrant sensibilities and passions to express our sense of outrage at what we can't control - and to forge a kind of fitful solidarity that turns out to be rather insular - we look inward and not outward. Michael Eric Dyson xenophobia passion country I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made. Michael Eric Dyson self believe people Even when you don't know, you're supposed to know. Michael Eric Dyson knows
