Michael Eric Dyson Quotes

Quotes about:

• Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth--even if they decide to help the less fortunate--while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Kindness, Order, Justice

  "Come Hell or High Water". Book by Michael Eric Dyson, www.today.com. 2006.

  88 Copy quote

• Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Justice, Sound, Speak

  Michael Eric Dyson (2009). “Can You Hear Me Now?: The Inspiration, Wisdom, and Insight of Michael Eric Dyson”, p.123, Basic Civitas Books

  69 Copy quote

• 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

  Light, Race, Black Youth

  Michael Eric Dyson (2010). “Know What I Mean?: Reflections on Hip Hop”, p.10, ReadHowYouWant.com

  73 Copy quote

• The consequences of whiteness are particularly lethal right now. And the ignorance about it, especially on the part of white people themselves, makes them unavoidably complicit in a system that has to be unmasked, unveiled, undressed in order to be reformed or destroyed.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Ignorance, Order, White

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

• My ambition didn't grow out of nowhere. It was planted in me by a community that nurtured me.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Ambition, Community, Grows

  30 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Welfare, Hopefully

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  10 Copy quote

• Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  White, Racist, Amplify

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

  28 Copy quote

• We can't exempt ourselves from the same moral calculus that we are willing to apply to others.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Moral, Calculus, Willing

  26 Copy quote

• Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn't political and racist in refusing to worship with us.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Brother, White, America

  "Professor checks out new landscape 'after King'". Interview with Arienne Thompson, www.usatoday.com. April 3, 2008.

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Humble, Four, Should

  "Michael Eric Dyson and 'Is Bill Cosby Right?'". "News & Notes" with Ed Gordon, www.npr.org. May 11, 2005.

  28 Copy quote

• To challenge norms, presuppositions, practices in communities across this country - where the unconscious valorization and celebration of whiteness and conscious resistance to trying to grapple with black and brown and other peoples of color's ideas and identities - makes a huge difference.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Country, Ideas, Differences

  "Michael Eric Dyson Wants White People to Step Up and Actually Do Something About Racism". Interview With Will Greenberg, www.motherjones.com. January 18, 2017.

  24 Copy quote

• I don't worship the Bible, I worship the God who gave the Bible.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Worship

  "Gay Marriage Divides Black Religious Leaders". Interview with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. May 15, 2009.

  38 Copy quote

• My job is to explain stuff you don't know or already know and have to unlearn. My job is to teach you stuff you don't know that you need to know, stuff you should know. I'm going to take what you already know and re-describe it.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Jobs, Needs, Stuff

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Uplifting, Moving, Tears

  Michael Eric Dyson (2009). “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America”, p.231, Basic Books

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Religious, Home, School

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  11 Copy quote

• Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator, misogyny, violence, materialism and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life ignored by most Americans. Indeed, gangsta rap's in-your-face style may do more to force America to confront crucial social problems than a million sermons or political speeches.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Rap, Ghetto, Gangsta

  69 Copy quote

• Social media itself is not protest. To tweet is not to protest physically. To do a Facebook post, and though it's critical and crucial, is not to show up and embody the anger you feel, to embody the righteous outrage you feel, to embody the concern you feel. This is about putting feet to pavement and to register in the consciousness of America that this is something that's problematic.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Media, Feet, America

  "A 'Moral Obligation' To Protest Trump, Says Michael Eric Dyson". "All Things Considered" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. June 19, 2016.

  29 Copy quote

• I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Believe, Self, People

  15 Copy quote

• The language of faith is crucial because it affords human beings the privilege of intimacy with the ultimate.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Privilege, Language, Intimacy

  Michael Eric Dyson (1996). “Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture”, Oxford University Press, USA

  25 Copy quote

• The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Reality, Moral

  34 Copy quote

• He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all, he was more than the sum of his artistic parts.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Rap, Hip Hop, May

  33 Copy quote

• 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

  Kings, Memorable, Winning

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  10 Copy quote

• I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Real, Responsibility, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Kings, Thinking, Odds

  29 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Believe, Second Chance, Needs

  "Michael Eric Dyson and 'Is Bill Cosby Right?'". "News & Notes" with Ed Gordon, www.npr.org. May 11, 2005.

  10 Copy quote

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