Michael Eric Dyson Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I guess I'm a Luddite.

I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.'

I was very struck when Min. Farrakhan said if Jesus and Muhammad were here today, they'd be embracing each other. That's a tremendous message that needs to be heard more broadly.

Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.

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.

I think it's extremely important to challenge white brothers and sisters and think more systematically and strategically about the whiteness that they possess.

All Americans deserve an equal crack at what it means to be a - having - having resources in your own home and in your state and in your country.

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.

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.

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.

The parallels between Elvis and Michael Jackson as incredible artists is evident. But I think that where Michael Jackson even transcends Elvis Presley.

Comedy is to force us to observe ourselves in ways that are humorous and yet, at the end of the day, that cause us enough discomfort with the status quo to make a change.

I don't think you can bury words. I think the more you try to dismiss them, the more power you give to them, the more circulation they have.

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.

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.

I have no interest in romanticizing poor black people, having been one of them myself in our beloved hometown of Detroit.

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.

When Dr. King was murdered, I had no idea who he was. But as soon as I heard his words on television that night when I was 9 years old, I was dumbstruck, awestruck by their power.

I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.

If white and black and red and brown can come together to focus our energies on overcoming the racial malaise that persists, then this will have been a great moment.

I received my calling and accepted it at around 18.

That kind of peer learning, that peer teaching, that peer evaluation, and then administration of insight.

My church is the world! I want to bring the gospel to as broad and as interesting an audience as possible.

I'm nervous about the prospects of an America that refuses to abide by its best conscience and its best lights and its best angels.

I had an exciting, interesting childhood, to be sure, with all of the challenges that ghetto life provides - but had loving parents.

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.

I grew up in Detroit. I was a teen father. I lived on welfare for three years. I have a brother serving life in prison, though I believe he's innocent.

I was trying to write a straightforward book of sociological analysis, or at least cultural criticism, and I failed.

Blackness is not simply a reactionary title or identity; that is indeed the "negative" way of characterizing African American identity.

The demand for racial (and sexual) justice gets reduced to politics of identity - and excoriating the so-called perpetrators of the identity politics.

I don't mind the job of saying to white people, "Yes, this is what I think you need to know, this is what I think you've been missing." And it's my job to educate white folks every day.

We began to connect literacy and learning and the lively effects of biblical knowledge and preaching pretty early. That was a tremendous impact.

I grew up in the church and began to recite set pieces at the age of four and five, like many of the other kids.

When I was 12 years old, my pastor came to the church: Dr. Fredrick Samson. And that was revolutionary because he mentored me and I got a chance to see up close the impact of a rhetorical genius.

I grew up on the West Side - the "near West Side," [in Detroit], as they say - in what would be considered now the inner city.

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

Tony Morrison said, 'Can't I love what I criticize, criticize what I love.'

Black people watch more television than anybody else, which makes it legitimate to talk about television. Its anesthetizing effect has been quite real. But that concern isn't new.

No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members.

White-on-white crime is a devastation in America like so-called black-on-black crime. It's not black or white-on-white crime. It's proximity murder.

Michael Joseph Jackson's genius was the ability to be the raw article himself - the real article himself. He is part of the African American people who were marginalized.