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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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Michael Eric Dyson
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: October 23
Author
Biographer
Historian
Detroit
Michigan
Trying
Failed
Cultural
Analysis
Criticism
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Write
Book
Sociological
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Straightforward

More quotes by Michael Eric Dyson

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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
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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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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
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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
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Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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
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Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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
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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
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No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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
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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
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What are you for? It may be, to a degree, consoling that white brothers and sisters did not vote for [Donald] Trump, and do not participate in that brand of animus, that gas-bagging of enormous bigotry.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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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But for poor black people and working-class black people, it is a much more difficult way to go. The over-incarceration of black people is just intolerable. When you look at the disparity in terms of education and access to fair schooling, it is horrible. If this would happen to white people in this country, it would not be tolerated.
Michael Eric Dyson
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I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.'
Michael Eric Dyson
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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
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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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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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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