Michael Eric Dyson Quotes
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We come from a proud tradition of people who have insisted that none of us can be truly successful until at least the barriers to such success and thriving are completely removed. I think the black narcissism that prevails, along with the stylish materialism and self-satisfied, smug attitudes among many of our upwardly mobile brothers and sisters should be identified and criticized.
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That is my job as an intellectual, as an extension of my vocation: to engage in a serious reckoning with the present manifestation of both white supremacy, white refusal to acknowledge culpability, and the attempts of black people to re-describe the harm and trauma we've endured, as well as to say afresh what it is that must be done if we are to be conscientious.
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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.
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The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests.
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Black women must challenge black men to live up to their best in every arena of the culture - at job, at home, in school and in religious arenas.
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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.
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All of us should be much more humble and contrite when we point the finger at somebody else, because four more fingers are pointing back at us.
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Ralph Ellison is a classic work of erudition, grace, and elegance. Rampersad offers us an Ellison whose gifts and warts orbit the same universe of creative genius. Like Ellison's work, Rampersad's text wrestles eloquently with difficult truths about race, politics, and American life.
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I think that the over-incarceration of black and brown folk is one of the great crimes of American society.
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I believe in a God of a second chance and a God of love and mercy, because I need so much more of it myself.
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It's not enough to be against something.
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Even when you don't know, you're supposed to know.
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There is not a history of black intellectuals being allied with dominant forces to hold white people in social and cultural subordination for a few centuries. Second, the "our" of black folk has always been far more inclusive that the "our" of white folk. For instance, there would have hardly been a need for "black" churches if "white" churches had meant their "our" for everybody - and not just white folk. But "our" black churches have always been open to all who would join. The same with white society at every level.
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America is capable at single moments of receiving the depth and the breadth of the homiletical vision of black America when a black preacher rises to his or her craft at the height of his or her ambition and the desire to tell America the truth.