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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

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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've written a lot of other books and this book [Tears we cannot stop] was different. I couldn't just say what I wanted to say in the same style that I said it in those other books. I felt compelled to preach.
Michael Eric Dyson
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I have no interest in romanticizing poor black people, having been one of them myself in our beloved hometown of Detroit.
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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I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.
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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When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don't necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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.
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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Blackness is not simply a reactionary title or identity that is indeed the negative way of characterizing African American identity.
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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When I was 12 years old, my pastor came to the church: Dr. Fredrick Samson. And that was revolutionary because he mentored me and I got a chance to see up close the impact of a rhetorical genius.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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
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The culture will not be able to persist in light of the rigid systems of its own innocence.
Michael Eric Dyson
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Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music.
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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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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[ Mrs. James, my fifth-grade teacher] introduced us to these authors early on and taught us that their literature is important. Langston Hughes - we read his poetry. We studied who W.E.B DuBois was. And so she whetted our appetites.
Michael Eric Dyson
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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
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Bigotry is surely an exportable American commodity, especially when it comes to race.
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.
Michael Eric Dyson