Michael Eric Dyson Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Even when you don't know, you're supposed to know.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Knows

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think sometimes younger people - not necessarily thinkers and intellectuals and the like, but people who are on social media and who are not as informed as journalists or professional thinkers - may get a bit, you know, impatient with the necessity of sustained thinking, sustained argumentation, sustained dialogue.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Thinking, Media, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• The heartbeat of your originality is deep within a body of thought that continually wrestles with the contradictions and limitations that we're constantly trying to overcome, the curiosities and the ignorances of the people we seek to help.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Ignorance, Heart, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  People, Black, Church

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• Ironically, there is a history of black/Irish communion here in the states; Irish and African American brothers and sisters have often found common cause in fighting the bigotry both communities faced earlier in the 20th century. However, white skin privilege among the Irish separated them from blacks, who had no such advantage to fall back upon. The solution is to fight bigotry and racism wherever they appear, and to root out the forces of oppression as conscientiously as possible.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Brother, Fall, Fighting

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• The beauty of the literary art, the grappling with the black church, the wrestling with one's identity in the bosom of a complicated black community that was both bulwark to the larger white society as well as a threshing ground, so to speak, to hash out the differences that black people have among ourselves.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Art, Wrestling, White

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  5 Copy quote

• It is true that race is a social fiction, a myth perpetuated by a variety of peoples throughout the modern period, especially, to further their own gains at the expense of others.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Modern, Myth, Variety

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  7 Copy quote

• White privilege allows a certain kind of leisure that can be deployed by white people of advantage toward our restoration. That's all true and good. But it also suggests that there is an individual approach to the issues that many of these white people have taken up as a recognition of their tie to and responsibility for some of the inequities that exist. And I don't think it has to be an either-or. I think it has to be a bifocal approach.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Taken, Responsibility, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Rap, Guy, Looks

  "Michael Eric Dyson on Rap and Hip-Hop". bigthink.com.

  4 Copy quote

• I went to school four years later than most people because I was a teen father, hustled on the streets, worked, lived on welfare and the like, and didn't get to college until almost 21. That's when I officially got licensed and ordained, right after that.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Father, School, College

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  6 Copy quote

• There are things that you can do on an individual level, even as you continue to fight oppression systemically, that make things a little bit better for an identifiable group.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Fighting, Groups, Levels

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

• The only way for white folks to reclaim the full arc of their humanity, the full trajectory of their ethical content, of their ethical identity, is to surrender the white innocence that prevents them from being fully mature.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  White, Humanity, Identity

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I have argued tirelessly, nearly endlessly, in so many books, about the need for the social, the economic reconstruction of society. The demand that people be present themselves, that they contribute to the reorganization of society, that they own up to their own complicity in a system from which they derive benefit and advantage, often without acknowledgement, and the discomfort, the uncomfortable way in which that must be acknowledged.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Book, People, Demand

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• We have to understand and explain to each other what blackness is.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Blackness

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Blackness is an ocean, a universe, a possibility that can never be exhausted. And so we have to constantly reaffirm the necessity of excavation, of archiving and curating, but also exploring, and understanding afresh and learning for the first time what it is that we need to know, and what the limits and boundaries are, and what the themes and preoccupations should be, and what the redemptive character of that erudition is. I find myself in the exciting position of doing all that, and at the same time having the obligation to explain to white people what the deal is.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Ocean, Character, White

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• Whiteness itself is artifice, is fiction, is a construction, is narrative, is myth. And I seek to deconstruct all of that, to challenge the accretion, the intellectual accretion, the philosophical secretion that generates within the edifice of white supremacy that allows people easy escape, and egress. And I'm saying, "No, you can't leave now. You cannot afford to not know what I'm talking about, because you gotta be held accountable."

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Philosophical, Talking, White

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Furthermore, the financial and social investment in prisons means that black and brown youth become, essentially, fodder for the machinery of capitalized incarceration. The steady supply of guns in the U.S. makes an already untenable situation even more dangerous, and all of us must raise our voices, write to Congress, hit the streets in protest, attend budget meetings of local municipalities - all to state our opposition to such criminal procedures and practices for our youth.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Writing, Mean, Gun

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• It is extremely interesting to me that black males, and other black folk, are viewed as self-pitying, by either other blacks who have failed to accurately calculate their own diminished status as a result of racial animosity - both individual and systemic - or by whites who fail to comprehend how, after forcing black folk into subservience for hundreds of years, they now whine about small privileges that pale - so to speak - in comparison to the untold advantage of centuries of benefit.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Interesting, Black, Speak

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  5 Copy quote

• I have written 13 books, full of my ideas about a variety of issues - from black women, to hip-hop culture, to the civil rights struggle. Even when I address such figures as Tupac Shakur and Bill Cosby, my ideas are quite evident.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Struggle, Book, Black

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• Men think women, they don't think men. They don't think toxic masculinity.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Men, Thinking, Toxic

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• There are many things that black women can continue to do to help black folk. First, black women have historically been among the most vocal advocates for equality in our community. We must take full advantage of such courage by continuing to combat the sexism in our communities. Black women, whether in church, or hip-hop, don't receive their just due. Second, when black women are in charge of child-rearing, they must make ever so sure to raise black children who respect both men and women, and who root out the malevolent beliefs about women that shatter our culture.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Children, Men, Community

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  8 Copy quote

• The emphasis on personal responsibility is something we've had in black America from the get-go. Every major leader and intellectual worth her salt has advocated for black folk to better ourselves and push ourselves to the limits of our abilities and gifts. At the same time, we've got to focus on creating a society that recognizes our worth, regardless of race and other factors.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Responsibility, Focus, Leader

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• Blackness also has positive dimensions, those that bear the political meanings of African American people, among other blacks, who have struggled for self-determination and freedom for centuries. The absence of such an identity doesn't automatically guarantee that we will be free of the images and ideals that fuel stereotypes about black identity. Changing the name will not alter the reality.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Reality, People, Political

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• Of course, I could never suggest that only poor people are misogynistic; too many rich folk are just as hateful of women as any poor person might be. I don't know if social problems are only circular; perhaps other geometric metaphors might better describe the triangular effects of social vulnerability, political oppression, and racial disadvantage. I think you're right - we've got to focus on both analyses and solutions. And sometimes, an adequate analysis goes far along in suggesting a suitable solution.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Thinking, People, Focus

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm just challenging white supremacy at its intellectual heart every day. It's a pedagogy that I deploy against some of the most vicious resistance to blackness that whiteness is able to throw up. I engage in a lot of intellectual combat with supremacists and with the predicate of white supremacy and white indifference to black identity, and brown and red and yellow identity too, for that matter.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Heart, Yellow, White

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

Page 3 of 7

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin