Black Quotes by Michael Eric Dyson

I think that the over-incarceration of black and brown folk is one of the great crimes of American society.

— Michael Eric Dyson

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

— Michael Eric Dyson

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

— Michael Eric Dyson

Body piercing and baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives…

— Michael Eric Dyson

[The World Series] introduced me for the first time to a team with a lot of black players. Detroit had about three…

— Michael Eric Dyson

There are many Americans who regardless of the intelligence or the profound political persuasion of a figure will never vote for a…

— Michael Eric Dyson

I have written 13 books, full of my ideas about a variety of issues - from black women, to hip-hop culture, to…

— Michael Eric Dyson

America certainly has made extraordinary progress. The collective unconscious of the nation has certainly shifted as a result of the civil rights…

— Michael Eric Dyson

If white and black and red and brown can come together to focus our energies on overcoming the racial malaise that persists,…

— Michael Eric Dyson

I want young people to look at me and go, 'Damn, I want to be like that brother. He sharp, he be…

— Michael Eric Dyson

I suppose that I inherited the same vocabulary and world view as most black Christians do, most Christians in general, to be…

— Michael Eric Dyson

That is my job as an intellectual, as an extension of my vocation: to engage in a serious reckoning with the present…

— Michael Eric Dyson

There's no question that O.J. Simpson had been a substitute white man in America. He had gained honorary white status. He was…

— Michael Eric Dyson

The beauty of the literary art, the grappling with the black church, the wrestling with one's identity in the bosom of a…

— Michael Eric Dyson

But for poor black people and working-class black people, it is a much more difficult way to go. The over-incarceration of black…

— Michael Eric Dyson

If your experiences suggest to you that poor black folk are lazy, then you must be true to those experiences - except,…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Blackness also has positive dimensions, those that bear the political meanings of African American people, among other blacks, who have struggled for…

— Michael Eric Dyson

We come from a proud tradition of people who have insisted that none of us can be truly successful until at least…

— Michael Eric Dyson

There are many things that black women can continue to do to help black folk. First, black women have historically been among…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Bill Cosby is a famous black guy who has a bully pulpit the size of the world; it's global. He puts his…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Black people watch more television than anybody else, which makes it legitimate to talk about television. Its anesthetizing effect has been quite…

— Michael Eric Dyson

It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young,…

— Michael Eric Dyson

I don't think that an emphasis on the peculiar plight of black males at all suggests that others are not suffering, or…

— Michael Eric Dyson

America is capable at single moments of receiving the depth and the breadth of the homiletical vision of black America when a…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the public mainstream that we've had in quite…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Black women must challenge black men to live up to their best in every arena of the culture - at job, at…

— Michael Eric Dyson

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

The demonizing of black identity is much more of a global phenomenon than many would like to admit. I've traveled abroad extensively,…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Michael [Jackson] reconstructed his face and deconstructed the African features into a spooky European geography of fleshly possibilities, and yet what we…

— Michael Eric Dyson

There are huge divorces and divides and chasms in black America between the have-gots and the have-nots, between the monied and the…

— Michael Eric Dyson

The emphasis on personal responsibility is something we've had in black America from the get-go. Every major leader and intellectual worth her…

— Michael Eric Dyson

The issue of redistribution of resources and wealth needs to resolved systemically, but in the meantime but there are individual spots you…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Ironically, there is a history of black/Irish communion here in the states; Irish and African American brothers and sisters have often found…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Light-skinned black people are seen to be closer to white people. The allegiance to lighter-skinned people has operated in a very destructive…

— Michael Eric Dyson

It is extremely interesting to me that black males, and other black folk, are viewed as self-pitying, by either other blacks who…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white…

— Michael Eric Dyson

The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, journalism, communications theory, American studies, transatlantic studies,…

— Michael Eric Dyson

There is not a history of black intellectuals being allied with dominant forces to hold white people in social and cultural subordination…

— Michael Eric Dyson

Black women must help black men understand their full potential lies not in denying black women full access to their humanity and…

— Michael Eric Dyson