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. – Michael Eric Dyson
I think there’s no question that Michael Jackson was the foremost entertainer of his generation; perhaps of all time, arguably, taking the skills of a Sammy Davis, Jr., bringing together the street dance of African American urban culture, joining them to the politics of dance, of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly on that sphere alone. – Michael Eric Dyson
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
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
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
I’m a ‘tweener,’ man! I couldn’t march with Dr. King and them. And I’m too old to be a hip-hopper. But I’ve been granted honorary status in each generation… I see my tongue as a bridge over which ideas can travel back and forth. – Michael Eric Dyson
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
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
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
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
When you have closed the Bible, you have neither closed God’s mind nor shut God’s mouth. God continues to speak, live and exist. I think we should consult the living God for the living word for living people dealing with death, destruction and despair in the midst of our hurt humanity. I believe love will conquer all. – Michael Eric Dyson
Hip hop scholarship must strive to reflect the form it interrogates, offering the same features as the best hip hop: seductive rhythms, throbbing beats, intelligent lyrics, soulful samples, and a sense of joy that is never exhausted in one sitting. – Michael Eric Dyson
By denying its musical and artistic merit, hip hop’s critics get to have it both ways: they can deny the legitimate artistic standing of rap while seizing on its pervasive influence as an art form to prove what a terrible effect it has on youth. – Michael Eric Dyson
I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mortality says to us that here’s a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them. – Michael Eric Dyson
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
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
The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, journalism, communications theory, American studies, transatlantic studies, black studies, history, musicology, comparative literature, English, linguistics, and other disciplines. – 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
George Bush ran a campaign where he bragged about being an anti-intellectual, dismissing his Harvard and Yale pedigree, pretending he was an American every day, ordinary everyman, and as a result of that, played up his fumbling speech because it signified that he was a good guy. That is deeply and profoundly anti-intellectual. – 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
When you see the misogyny of hip-hop, it’s so horrible, it’s so putrid, it’s so, you know, odious, that we know, we smell, we see it. The misogyny that is reified, that is reinforced, that is subtly reproduced in corporate America or in church life or in synagogues and temples and the like, is sometimes more subtly dealt with. – 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 on point. He represent black people.’ I want to make the life of the mind sexy. – Michael Eric Dyson
If you take a guy like a Barack Obama, who’s raised millions of dollars from the most donors in the history of this nation, it suggests that there’s a deep and profound hunger for a new politics to come forth. And a guy like him has been able to mobilize that and to reach certain parts of the hip-hop generation. – Michael Eric Dyson
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
I think public intellectuals have a responsibility – to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence. – Michael Eric Dyson
In our high-tech, high-skilled economy where low-skilled work is being scaled back, phased out, exported, or severely under-compensated, all the right behavior in the world won’t create better jobs with more pay. – Michael Eric Dyson
Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers. – Michael Eric Dyson
In the minds of many Americans, if you are a radical Democrat or a Socialist, you are automatically a Communist. And if you are a Communist, then therefore you are an anti-American person and a person who is not a patriot. But nothing is further from the truth. – 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 Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines. – Michael Eric Dyson
