Quote

I don't think you can bury words. I think the more you try to dismiss them, the more power you give to them, the more circulation they have.

Michael Eric Dyson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Michael Eric Dyson
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: October 23
Author
Biographer
Historian
Detroit
Michigan
Bury
Words
Power
Give
Giving
Trying
Think
Dismiss
Thinking
Circulation

More quotes by Michael Eric Dyson

Image
We must continue to insist to our better off brothers and sisters that they are in the same racial boat as their less better off kin. Even elevated class status and superior financial standing cannot ward off the effects and consequences of racism.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
I had an exciting, interesting childhood, to be sure, with all of the challenges that ghetto life provides - but had loving parents.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
I'm nervous about the prospects of an America that refuses to abide by its best conscience and its best lights and its best angels.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
I think that Michael Jackson, just as an entertainer, as a figure who embodies the contradictions of Black identity, and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human beings that we've ever produced in our tradition.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
To challenge norms, presuppositions, practices in communities across this country - where the unconscious valorization and celebration of whiteness and conscious resistance to trying to grapple with black and brown and other peoples of color's ideas and identities - makes a huge difference.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
I knew Snoop Dog didn't start misogyny. I knew that Tupac Shakur didn't start sexism, and God knows that Dr. Dre didn't start patriarchy. Yet they extended it in vicious form within their own communities. They made vulnerable people more vulnerable.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
I think that he [Michael Jackson] did derive an ultimate sense of joy and satisfaction in what others enjoyed from him that was denied to himself. There's no question that the transcendent art that he created was a means, an instrument, a vehicle for others to experience what he didn't.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
There is a consciousness as an agent of one's own destiny as a person in America, there are things that can be done, there are advantages and benefits which exist that are directly related to - and even rest upon - white privilege.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
If white and black and red and brown can come together to focus our energies on overcoming the racial malaise that persists, then this will have been a great moment.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
Hip hop scholarship must strive to reflect the form it interrogates, offering the same features as the best hip hop: seductive rhythms, throbbing beats, intelligent lyrics, soulful samples, and a sense of joy that is never exhausted in one sitting.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
I've been a social gospel-er and a person who sees politics as a central dynamic to the encoding of religious rhetoric.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
There's a great book about John Kennedy and his relationship to civil rights called 'The Bystander.' The title alone suggests that he did as little as possible, any minimal critical effort, to really facilitate civil rights in the White House.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
I grew up in the church and began to recite set pieces at the age of four and five, like many of the other kids.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
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
Image
What he [Michael Jackson] did was he allowed us, through his voice and his instrument, to see a glimpse of the heaven that he himself was denied. That sacrifice was the ultimate source of redemption that he gave to us.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
My church is the world! I want to bring the gospel to as broad and as interesting an audience as possible.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
Men think women, they don't think men. They don't think toxic masculinity.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
Michael Joseph Jackson's genius was the ability to be the raw article himself - the real article himself. He is part of the African American people who were marginalized.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
I went to school four years later than most people because I was a teen father, hustled on the streets, worked, lived on welfare and the like, and didn't get to college until almost 21. That's when I officially got licensed and ordained, right after that.
Michael Eric Dyson