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It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, I have to work with whites.
Michael Emerson
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Michael Emerson
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 7
Actor
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Cedar Rapids
Iowa
mike
Stills
Total
Still
Changing
May
Institutions
Sometimes
Americans
Whites
Work
Control
Institution
Saying
Statement
Hear
African
Place
Statements
More quotes by Michael Emerson
I think whites are used to being in power, so when whites think we ought to have integrated churches they think, People ought to come to our church. What can we do to get them to come?
Michael Emerson
I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I don't want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down. It's also, of course, as we know, the seat of political organization and the affirming of your blackness and so on.
Michael Emerson
Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start - they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there's often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave.
Michael Emerson
So you find a lot of these sixth Americans congregate in these interracial congregations. They hang out together at work, at school, wherever.
Michael Emerson
That's a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate then. There are so many more of them, and they're used to being in the position of power. So they'll just take over, and we'll lose the one thing we do have.
Michael Emerson
Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they'd even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together.
Michael Emerson
We're going to see more, and we are seeing more, and I'll tell you exactly why. Not because white and black are more likely to get together. Only a third of the seven percent of congregations that are interracial are black and white.
Michael Emerson
So different groups have different definitions, and then they clash on those. So it takes adept leadership to say we're going to work through these.
Michael Emerson
I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.
Michael Emerson
Maybe there's even anger. But if they make it through that they come to a new agreement, and they start creating a new culture, and it becomes something that people just - a lot of times they'll say, I couldn't live without it. I just have to be there.
Michael Emerson
I think people respond to villains because people in general are more villainous than heroic.
Michael Emerson
They could never go back to being a uniracial congregation again. It brings excitement. It brings life. It allows them to be able to know people they would never know, to meet people that are outside the congregation they would have never connected with, you know, through the networks that they developed in the congregation.
Michael Emerson
I've been blessed by doing classic plays on Broadway, which was one of my great dreams forever.
Michael Emerson
And then they would have the shoe removers on one side, and the non-shoe removers on the other side until they could work through coming to understand why we might both be trying to worship authentically, and because of our cultural background we have these different ideas. But it took a while.
Michael Emerson
One of the things I like about performing on the stage is that it is a kind of meditative experience. Time does stand still. You have no concept or feeling of the passing of two or three hours' time. It's all kind of one present moment, which is a kind of a description of meditation.
Michael Emerson
I spent a lot of time developing in books why worshipping separately actually impacts inequality, economic, social, on and on. So I really do believe there are huge advantages to being together even though it's difficult, even though we have a lot to learn.
Michael Emerson
So there was great clashes when, you know, if you believe you shouldn't remove your shoes and someone's taking their shoes off, how can they do this? That actually was such a big clash in this case that they had to put a curtain down the middle of where they would worship.
Michael Emerson
My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career.
Michael Emerson
It's the sad fact of how race still works in our country. We find that over and over again.
Michael Emerson
It's one of the things we find in these congregations is that they are much more likely to be sort of up-beat worship styles, more likely that people in these congregations say Amen, maybe get up and dance some, tend to be a little bit more lively than a typical white service would be, but not as lively as a typical black service would be.
Michael Emerson
