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" Barack Obama has come closer than any figure in recent history to obeying a direct call of the people to the brutal and bloody fields of political mission. "
Michael Eric Dyson
History
Mission
People
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" I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man. "
Michael Eric Dyson
I Was Born
School
Man
" Hip-hop has globalized a conception of blackness that has had a political impact, whether or not it had a political intent. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Hip-Hop
Political
Intent
" Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the public mainstream that we've had in quite a long time, if ever. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Spiritual
Time
Black
" Race was thick in the O.J. Simpson case from the very beginning, but it wasn't evident. And I think the O.J. Simpson case revealed that there is subtle race, and there is sophisticated race, and there's evident and observable race. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Race
Think
Sophisticated
" It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young, and poor. Simply said, race makes class hurt more. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Hurt
White
Race
" I think we have to face right in the center of the hurricane, if you will, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s foibles and faults. I think that we do no good to ourselves and do no honor to him by pretending that he did not fail, that he did not wrestle greatly and, at times, surrender to his own sins and his own faults and failures. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Honor
Face
Think
" Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this. "
Michael Eric Dyson
People
America
American
" Speaking out against rap music is useless, and it's futile. The reality is there's criticism for everything, but Jay-Z is one of the most remarkable artists of our time of any genre, and as a hip-hop artist he carries the weight of that art form with such splendor and grace and genius. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Grace
Art
Reality
" 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. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Day
Change
Comedy
" I don't worship the Bible, I worship the God who gave the Bible. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Who
Worship
God
" Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music. Remember, he was a chocolate, cherubic-faced genius with an African American halo. He had an Afro halo. He was a kid who was capable of embodying all of the high possibilities and the deep griefs that besieged the African American psyche. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Genius
American
Chocolate
" I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.' "
Michael Eric Dyson
Audience
Church
People
" I think the O.J. Simpson case conjured all the paranoia, the racial anxiety, but also the racial fatigue that America has endured over the last half century. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Last
Racial
Anxiety
" I knew Snoop Dog didn't start misogyny. I knew that Tupac Shakur didn't start sexism, and God knows that Dr. Dre didn't start patriarchy. Yet they extended it in vicious form within their own communities. They made vulnerable people more vulnerable. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Start
Patriarchy
Own
" New Orleans invented the brown paper bag party - usually at a gathering in a home - where anyone darker than the bag attached to the door was denied entrance. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Black
Life
Home
" When white supremacy becomes institutional, it begins to harm the very people who are not simply outside of it because of their race, it begins to harm the folk who look like the folk who want to be in charge. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this, Malcolm X understood this, James Baldwin really understood this. "
Michael Eric Dyson
King
Look
People
" 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. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Television
Power
Night
" Body piercing and baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Culture
Youth
Beginning
" 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
Golf
Black
American
" I want young people to look at me and go, 'Damn, I want to be like that brother. He sharp, he be on point. He represent black people.' I want to make the life of the mind sexy. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Life
Brother
Mind
" 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
Person
World
Last
" Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Brilliance
Hip-Hop
Poetry
" 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
Radio
Music
Progressive
" 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. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Father
Believe
Teen
" 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 Eric Dyson
Black
Devastation
America
" 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
Prevail
You
Social
" I suppose that I inherited the same vocabulary and world view as most black Christians do, most Christians in general, to be sure. It was heterosexist in the sense that it took the heterosexual orientation as the norm from which to start as the given. And everything that fell outside of that was not acceptable. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Black
Everything
View
" My ambition didn't grow out of nowhere. It was planted in me by a community that nurtured me. "
Michael Eric Dyson
Grow
Ambition
Nowhere
" 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
Politics
Best
History
" 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
Life
Death
Words