Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Michael Eric Dyson
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: October 23
Author
Biographer
Historian
Detroit
Michigan
Think
Missing
Thinking
Saying
People
White
Jobs
Need
Needs
Every
Educate
Mind
Folks

More quotes by Michael Eric Dyson

Image
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
Image
Blackness is not simply a reactionary title or identity that is indeed the negative way of characterizing African American identity.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
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
Image
You must address the historical and political differences in race and ethnicity in this country before you hold tenaciously to insubstantial, and unsubtantiated, beliefs.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
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
Image
I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.'
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
Class certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites.
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
We have to understand and explain to each other what blackness is.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
That is an extremely important role: how white brothers and sisters laterally spread knowledge, insight, and challenge in a way that white brothers and sisters will not hear it from a person like me, necessarily.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
Record labels collude with some of the radio stations, and the radio stations have their play lists, dependent upon what they call the, quote, 'hits.' What's commercially viable gets recycled, endlessly repeated, and as a result of that, the progressive music can't break in.
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
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
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
Image
I have no interest in romanticizing poor black people, having been one of them myself in our beloved hometown of Detroit.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
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
Image
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.
Michael Eric Dyson
Image
Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.
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