Michael Eric Dyson Quotes - Page 5

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• Light-skinned black people are seen to be closer to white people. The allegiance to lighter-skinned people has operated in a very destructive way that we have internalized ourselves inside black communities. You look at many of the prominent black people in this society who have been able to do well. Many have been lighter-skinned.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Light, White, People

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• You cannot hear the name Martin Luther King, Jr., and not think of death. You might hear the words 'I have a dream,' but they will doubtlessly only serve to underscore an image of a simple motel balcony, a large man made small, a pool of blood. For as famous as he may have been in life, it is - and was - death that ultimately defined him.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Dream, Kings, Simple

  Michael Eric Dyson (2009). “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America”, p.3, Basic Books

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• When you saw the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," that was Michael [Jackson]'s story write large. Born as an elderly person, Benjamin Button was, in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and in the film starring Brad Pitt, he dies as a newborn child. Michael Jackson's childhood was one of enormous, prodigious production.He was a child prodigy, he was a wunderkind.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Children, Writing, Elderly

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• There is no conscious choice of heterosexual identity any more than there is a homosexual one. The last person in the world who wants to be homosexual, for the most part, are homosexuals.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Choices, Identity, World

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

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• What he [Michael Jackson] did was he allowed us, through his voice and his instrument, to see a glimpse of the heaven that he himself was denied. That sacrifice was the ultimate source of redemption that he gave to us.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Sacrifice, Voice, Heaven

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Record labels collude with some of the radio stations, and the radio stations have their play lists, dependent upon what they call the, quote, 'hits.' What's commercially viable gets recycled, endlessly repeated, and as a result of that, the progressive music can't break in.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Play, Labels, Records

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• There's a dark underside to philanthropy. People who give a bunch of money are deferred to, even when they are wrong. The emperor cannot be shown to have no clothes.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Dark, Clothes, People

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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

  Artist, Thinking, Incredibles

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• There's no question that O.J. Simpson had been a substitute white man in America. He had gained honorary white status. He was not viewed by many white Americans as black. He was not seen as the African American athlete who was rebellious: Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron... He was accepted in golf clubs that were very tony.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Athlete, Golf, Men

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• Michael [Jackson] reconstructed his face and deconstructed the African features into a spooky European geography of fleshly possibilities, and yet what we couldn't deny, that even as his face got whiter and whiter his music got Blacker and Blacker. His soul got more deeply rooted in the existential agony and the profound social grief that Black people are heir to.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Grief, Agony, Profound

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Originality doesn't consist of saying it first, originality consists of saying it in a way that is specifically tailored to the moment in which you are addressing - and at the moment when the complications arise, challenging the logic of what you're doing.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Challenges, Firsts, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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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.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Single Mom, Ambition, America

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I've been a social gospel-er and a person who sees politics as a central dynamic to the encoding of religious rhetoric.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Religious, Social, Rhetoric

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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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.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Jobs, White, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Bigotry is surely an exportable American commodity, especially when it comes to race.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Commodity, Bigotry

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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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

  Light, Culture, Able

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• You must address the historical and political differences in race and ethnicity in this country before you hold tenaciously to insubstantial, and unsubtantiated, beliefs.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Country, Political, Historical

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Black women must help black men understand their full potential lies not in denying black women full access to their humanity and opportunity, but in working diligently to overcome the odds that hamper our progress. Yes, some of that is self-imposed, and we must confront it; and much of it comes from outside. But without courageous and brilliant black women, our communities are greatly diminished.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Lying, Opportunity, Men

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• A lot of the commercial expression of hip-hop leaves a lot to be desired - but then, there's a lot of whack gospel music, but I'm not leading a crusade against it. Of course, the vices of hip-hop are far more influential, I understand. But the good that hip-hop transmits, the power of the culture to rally the best of our protest, and uplift, and resistance, traditions, is often unfairly overlooked.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Uplifting, Culture, Influential

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I do believe that it is quite necessary for us as a people to reach back, over and down to help the less fortunate of our number.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Believe, People, Helping

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• The demonizing of black identity is much more of a global phenomenon than many would like to admit. I've traveled abroad extensively, and it's hard to ignore the subordination of darker peoples to lighter peoples the world around.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Black, Identity, World

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I went to see Chris Rock on Saturday night here in Atlanta, and he made a statement in his comedy. He said, look, when you're the big person, when you're the rich person, poor people can say stuff about you, but it's downright wrong and brutal for rich people to beat up on poor people. He said people who are larger can lampoon people who are skinnier, but not the opposite.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Night, People, Comedy

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• If journalism is the first draft of history, then digital literacy is the first blush of the first page of history.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Pages, Digital, Firsts

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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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

  Sorry, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I have written 5 books that address major figures in our culture: books on Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Tupac Shakur, Marvin Gaye and Bill Cosby. But even in the books that take up major figures, I hope to provoke conversation, insight and understanding about these personalities by providing new, fresh and vital information and analysis about them.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Book, Personality, Understanding

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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