Michael Eric Dyson Quotes
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The language of faith is crucial because it affords human beings the privilege of intimacy with the ultimate.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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The problem is we are left only with empathy - which is critical, if it can be developed - without substantive manifestations of that empathy. It's one thing to attain it intellectually, but it's another thing to do something about it.
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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.
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It's not enough to be against something.
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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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Even when you don't know, you're supposed to know.
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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.