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There's a dark underside to philanthropy. People who give a bunch of money are deferred to, even when they are wrong. The emperor cannot be shown to have no clothes.

Michael Eric Dyson

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Michael Eric Dyson
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: October 23
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More quotes by Michael Eric Dyson

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I suppose that I inherited the same vocabulary and world view as most black Christians do, most Christians in general, to be sure. It was heterosexist in the sense that it took the heterosexual orientation as the norm from which to start as the given. And everything that fell outside of that was not acceptable.
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I'm not trying to say stop Donald Trump from being elected as his party's nominee. I'm saying that we have a responsibility to raise our voices, to say what he does as an American citizen is pretty destructive to the practice of goodhearted and conscientious politics.
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I was trying to write a straightforward book of sociological analysis, or at least cultural criticism, and I failed.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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
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There are many Americans who regardless of the intelligence or the profound political persuasion of a figure will never vote for a black man. Not all of them are racists some are skeptical, and some are suspicious.
Michael Eric Dyson
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I didn't get to college until my 20s, because I was a young father on welfare and had to take all kind of jobs to support my young son. There's what frames my view on the topics I discuss on my shows, and the average person relates to that. No matter how many degrees I have now, I lived that life, and that comes through to the people watching.
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..And the same rapper who revels in a woman's finely proportioned behind may also speak against racism and on behalf of the poor, even as he encourages them not to look at hip-hop as their salvation.
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I don't think that an emphasis on the peculiar plight of black males at all suggests that others are not suffering, or that such attention suggests that black men and women feel sorry for themselves.
Michael Eric Dyson
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My empathy for poor people comes from having been one of them for so long, from knowing that their humanity is more complex and that the truths of their suffering have to be told honestly.
Michael Eric Dyson
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Body piercing and baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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
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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
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It's not enough to be against something.
Michael Eric Dyson
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I don't mind the job of saying to white people, Yes, this is what I think you need to know, this is what I think you've been missing. And it's my job to educate white folks every day.
Michael Eric Dyson
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Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.
Michael Eric Dyson
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Bigotry is surely an exportable American commodity, especially when it comes to race.
Michael Eric Dyson
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There's no question that O.J. Simpson had been a substitute white man in America. He had gained honorary white status. He was not viewed by many white Americans as black. He was not seen as the African American athlete who was rebellious: Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron... He was accepted in golf clubs that were very tony.
Michael Eric Dyson
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We began to connect literacy and learning and the lively effects of biblical knowledge and preaching pretty early. That was a tremendous impact.
Michael Eric Dyson
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I think the reality is Michael Jackson's humanity is so deep, the implications and inferences of his art so monumentally and magnificently global, that nothing American television could do to besmirch his character could ever, if you will, deny the legitimate genius that he represents and America has responded, as indeed has the globe.
Michael Eric Dyson
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It is true that race is a social fiction, a myth perpetuated by a variety of peoples throughout the modern period, especially, to further their own gains at the expense of others.
Michael Eric Dyson