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Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music.
Michael Eric Dyson
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Michael Eric Dyson
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: October 23
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Detroit
Michigan
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Altered
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More quotes by Michael Eric Dyson
I think that what Donald Trump is doing, the way in which racism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim belief and the like are being expressed through the campaign of Donald Trump, calls for, I think, a very vigorous and aggressive response to what he's saying.
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Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.
Michael Eric Dyson
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
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.
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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
I was born in '58, so the riot in Detroit in 1967 was a memorable introduction to the issue of race and how race made a difference in American society. And then the next year, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. And the Detroit Tigers winning the World Series. All of that made a huge impression on my growing mind.
Michael Eric Dyson
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
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
The parallels between Elvis and Michael Jackson as incredible artists is evident. But I think that where Michael Jackson even transcends Elvis Presley.
Michael Eric Dyson
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
..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.
Michael Eric Dyson
You cannot hear the name Martin Luther King, Jr., and not think of death. You might hear the words 'I have a dream,' but they will doubtlessly only serve to underscore an image of a simple motel balcony, a large man made small, a pool of blood. For as famous as he may have been in life, it is - and was - death that ultimately defined him.
Michael Eric Dyson
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
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
Elvis [Presley] had a stepstool, if you will, to success because he came from the dominant culture. They identified with him. Michael Jackson had to come further and go deeper into the pit of possibility of American democracy and of cultural expression.
Michael Eric Dyson
I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.'
Michael Eric Dyson
I have no interest in romanticizing poor black people, having been one of them myself in our beloved hometown of Detroit.
Michael Eric Dyson
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
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
Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this.
Michael Eric Dyson