Transcripts For CSPAN2 Michael Eric Dyson Discusses Tears We Cannot Stop 20170129

I am lily and im a bend associate of politics and prose and im really glad you were here tonight. We do events all of the city from our main store on connecticut avenue to our busboys and poets who locations. We have gotten incredibly diverse and dynamic lineups this season starting tonight and continuing in the next few weeks with Sybrina Fulton and tracy martin who are the parents of trayvon martin. We hope you will join us for those events. Tonight we are so glad you have joined us to welcome Michael Eric Dyson who is a Georgetown Professor of sociology and ordained minister and author of 19 books most recently the black presidency from which he read at politics and prose not thank. His newest book tears we cannot stop a sermon to White America is the core Patrick Phillips New York Times has book that should take its place in baltimore and the fire next time in kings when we way. Combines colter mouses personal experience and is consuming in every way. Washington post Carlos Lovato wrote readers will find searing moments in tears we cannot stop when dysons words are unforgettable and i confess to that. This is the book that will stick with me for a long time. Our conversation with wesley lowered her who is a National Reporter at the Washington Post and the author of they cant kill us all Ferguson Baltimore and the new era in american justice. Im going to turn this over to wesley but before i do please join me in welcoming Wesley Lowery and Michael Eric Dyson. [applause] good evening everybody. We appreciate you coming out for what is sure to be an excellent conversation about what is a remarkably done and very moving and compelling piece of writing. You have written 19 books and i would hope you would start getting pretty good at it. But what we have all known is that dr. Dyson has been excellent for a long time. Now it would be unfitting i guess to start this conversation anywhere else than where we were having it back in the green room prior where we were sitting here two days before a president ial inauguration after a campaign to replace the first black president in a campaign, and a campaign that led to the election of their replacement who objectively ran a campaign premised on certainly racial discord and racial unrest in many would say racism. How would you describe the temperature of the current moment in this nation as it relates to the ongoing wages of what our president describes in our original sin of slavery . First of all i want to thank politics and prose and sixth and i. And one of the most gifted and fiercely intelligent journalists and thinkers we have brother Wesley Lowery. Lets give it out for him. [applause] we are in a fix, a model. There are many words we could generate to articulate this sense of missouri misery social distress of apocalypse and chaos and thats just the beginning of the analysis but it is true that my pastor used to tell me we have are to come through what we have come to so Howard Thurmond the great africanamerican mystic said refused to reduce your life to the events you confront. This particular events will not exalt the Infinite Possibilities of eternity or even time from fulfilling themselves and for us engaging in behavior that will modify a future that is not yet arrived. In other words we kinkajou beat to the changing of society and the scene in which we live i our concerted efforts and actions so its not fixed. Start rigidly determined. We may have some predestination that would determine the outcome in advance but i think that the radical possibilities of human act 70 can always modify what we think is in the offing. When it comes to president obama versus donald trump its too easy to draw the contrast. One man interviewed by the New York Times about the hoax that informed his own consciousness, the wide range of literacy that articulates one of the most profound sensibilities of engagement with cerebral matters that his ever darken the oval office. Right . [applause] so we have abraham lincoln, thomas jefferson, a rock obama, even if we must be grudgingly or grudgingly acknowledge Woodrow Wilson pickett as he was Theodore Roosevelt in fdr, these are men who have engaged in serious and sustained rapport with literate sources. Then we have donald trump. I dont know if tweeting constitutes a new form of literacy in a postmodern moment they did construction of sense and logic and in their place prices up a episodic intervention. This is the first toddler presidency and i say that with all due respect to toddlers. [applause] lets be real. Donald trump has arrived in america for a very specific reason. This is the man who attacked the legitimacy of Barack Hussein obama for a year and a half, two years with relentless intensity, with remorseless velocity. He shattered the social compact such as it existed in the nation around us a fragile, and c. By intervening with some of the most vicious lambasting in the last 50 years. A sitting president being challenged to his legitimacy as president of the United States of america in the birther racism by suggesting his or her certificates suggested that he wasnt really an american and that he was hiding something. All of this amalgam of Conspiracy Theory and hateful vengeful white supremacist thinking. When you put that stuff together that concoction as well prove to be a nasty brew and yet still this is the guy who rolls to the top. This is the man that any people in america chose to be president of the United States of america. Hes a standard bearer over a party that rose up against him to begin with. We think about frankenstein remember frankenstein was the name of the doctor, not the monster. Thats too created, whoever created the donald trump equally responsible as donald trump the monster himself metaphorically speaking mr. Trump so the reality is a party created him. When you are assaulted obama and said the first thing you want is to do was make him a oneterm president and when you got together on the day of his inauguration to say we will figure out a way to make him unsuccessful you are unpatriotic. My friends you are not americans but you placed yourselves up to suggest that obama was not truly american. What is he lacks hes a socialist, he is a communist and you are recognized there are contradictory elements within these assertions. He doesnt believe in god he believes in one other gods of the whole point is all this stuff they try to lay on obama was the articulation of a venomous fundamental principle. We dont want a knee grow in charge and you can dress it up and you can try to pretend that his ideological, political, sure thats part of it that at the end of the day the resurgence of racial animus he of lack hostility is at the root of so much of what we see in response to obama and now that he is living leaving, dont we miss him already . Oh my god, oh my lord where are you going . Is like the color purple. I dont know, just help them out. Secretary of common sense but mr. Trump does represent something thats quite interesting. It is the fact that theres a certain kind of misstep metastasizing whiteness a particular variety and species of white as that is indifferent to its own innocence, that is hostile to being taken to account for the things it says and does and in my book what i try to do is to interrogate the sources of that. Whered it come from . It didnt start with donald trump. It began long ago at the beginning of our experiment of democracy. What i try to address in the book is where we got it from and what we do now that he has arrived in the most powerful metaphor for metastasized whiteness in the body politic that led to the deception of the mock or see. Sorry for that metaphor but thats kind of where i am. The books subtitle is a sermon to White America. Early in the book, page 70 right i simply want to bear witness to the truth icmb reality i know and without White America wrestling with history and accepting these realities we may not survive. In this moment to whiteness is not a new construct and not something invented by donald trump. Although its certainly interacted with the black presidency. I think the phrase fierce urgency of now again youre right we might not survive in a world essentially in which White Americans are unwilling or incapable of can writing this concept of whiteness in technology and the truth and the reality of black and brown america. Its a great point. Look, many White Brothers and sisters perhaps even present here tonight are just a little bit subcutaneous reaction of things seen as a group. How dare you. They havent had the luxury of being individuals. Black folks dont know anything about that. Where all part of the group and if one of you all did it you updated. Please dont let it be a black man, please. Not this time. Dont let it be please. No disrespect, take some of the blame. Let it be a latino and all of us together led to be a white guy. So the way in which we are born into and almost intrinsic conception of collectivity that we can never be judged as an individual that even when we are seen as an individual we are seen as an exception too or the bad and the black people do are seen as representative of the group and the great things we do are seen as exceptions to the group. Many White Brothers and sisters are thinking of themselves not as white as human beings. What a luxury. What a beautiful thing. You dont even see your whiteness. Thats great. We see it and whats interesting is on the one hand theres an edifying conception of a certain kind of endeavor and two at the city or race. Thats beautiful of but on the other hand its real dangerous because when you have that you dont know it and it can be real problematic if you are not a handle it. You think you have a toy gun that youve got a winchester. You know what im saying, a glock. To be more contemporary, and are a whats up . Whats interesting is if you deployed a whiteness without knowing you are to playing at its problematic in many white others and sisters did not want to be called to account metaphysically or metaphorically as a group. On the radio earlier, why are you calling us . Okay. I can come up with a nonblack nonbrown nonyellow, right . Ycs altogether . I understand the rebellion but the reality is its a way of engaging a group of people that we you know you have diversities and contradictions many of which are not ascribed to africanamerican people in the shoe was on the other foot or the tongue is on the other side of the cheat or the reality is that black americans have not been invited and engaged to think soap critically and introspectively about what it means to be white. When we think like men, men think gender, thats a bunch of women. You have a gender too. You can grab things. You can be predatory. Misogyny sexism and patriarchy combined tube lethal attempts against vulnerable bodies. So men dont think about gender with regard to themselves and white others and sisters dont take think about race with the guards themselves. You have a race too. Ethnicity is one thing. If we bring up anything italian lithuanian jewish or polish and race however is made in the crucible of america because you would be italian or lithuanian or polish and you come to america and its a crucible of grace. That polish identity is pulverized in the crucible of race and remade as white men. People dont begin to make those distinctions. You are from the northern part of italy or the southern part of france and poland and then greek and all those differences that make a difference when you are in europe become less important when you come to america because you lose a specificity of ethnicity and race substitutes in a planned way but it also disallows a serious engagement with the social construct called whiteness. Whiteness as a political identity. Soft something you are worn with. You learn to become white and you become white by breathing in the atmosphere of a society that will insert significance in what that white identity is. Many white runners and sisters were of the description of Group Identity to them and yet welcome to the world of black and brown and yellow people and welcome to the world of women and many minorities. I think its extremely important for us to wrestle with that notion of whiteness in employer test method how does operates a white others and sisters become conscious of it and get a grasp on it and began to interrogate it empty and just active about it, begin to talk about it in ways that are not defensive for nastier vicious or putting down but calmly reflective about the existential and political identities that are ascribed to you and how whiteness has been an advantage for you. So my people tell me hey you are a rich professor from georgetown. Im certainly a professor from georgetown, thats true. Im a rich professor from georgetown but the reality is that it aint like Jackie Robinsons children who got an exemption from jim crow because they were rich. Its not like joe louis family got an exemption. In other words rich black people didnt get treated better than poor black people when it came to a white water fountain so why is it now as it compensatory scheme of justice we say well its not right that black people be aired to certain legacies of benefit advantage because now youve got more money. It was never about the dell. It was never about the cash. It was never about the money. It was about the color and the culture in the race. On the other hand if you are white person and you get stopped by the police and you dont die thats the greatest White Privilege in the world at least in america that you dont interact with a Police Person and you end up dead. I was in front of bens chilly bowl at few months ago at 4 30 in the morning i was doing a study that night. [laughter] the bacchanalia of the clubs of d. C. Wondering what the young people were engaged in. Let me see myself. Im out there 4 30 and a white kid is going off on the police. You. [blank] ,. [blank] and ipad oh my god theyre going to shoot him. No, hes a white guy. Heres what the police said. Son, you are clearly inebriated. You need to go home. All black folks are saying, can we get that . Dont shoot us, dont stab us. Tamir rice within two seconds you have made a snap decision to deprive our children of rights. That is the cumulative knowledge the epistemology of fear. It is the projection of stereotype of unconscious racial profiling of a 12yearold child. What we want is a cessation of the velocity of stereotype and a granting of the same humanity that you rant each other. If White Brothers and sisters can tell the truth about that and can grapple with that i think we would make a lot more progress than trying to grapple with what it means to be white. It struck me as i start with this book and something on the conversation of many black writers and journalists and authors have themselves. One thing that came to mind is i remember a response that to nazi codes response. Why do white people of the so much and talking about who he writes for he said i felt like any of the people i was reading the 90s were burdened by it the need to explain to white people. You set out with the stated goal and purpose of proselytizing to white people. This was believe it or not the title of the sermon. What do you see as the role of black men and black women who are engaged in telling the stories of black drama and black pain and what is the responsibility to engage with the white majority. Thats a great point. Many of my millennial students say look im not here to teach you speaking to White America. They are talking to you but they are speaking to me. Im not there to teach you anything. Im literally a teacher. Yes, i am your teacher and i get all kinds of hate mail from white people. I might as well say that get 10 emails a day. Im such a great guy. Could you at least a professor, please . Can you at least shout me out on the pedigree of my i. D. . So you get that kind of low back and you get that animus and that kind of hostility and some of the letters i get from irate parents i cant believe you are a professor at georgetown. You are trying to work the mines of my children. Yeah i am actually. Thats my stated goal. Beam them up scotty, warped speed. Ive got to try to reject or that bank that ive got to try to open those minds up. I want to deconstruct it and challenge it. I want to do mythologizing use words that might make you upset because you dont know im saying and you are especially mad that a unique row would say stuff that you dont understand because you out simultaneously. I come from a different generation than brother coats. I understand his explanation to say i take a black university is the norm therefore i dont speak to white mothers and sisters. I have the books that dont even take into account what dominant Society Might believe are perfect on in the sense of a cultural starting point but my job always as the scholars to think critically about this. Im a bit more suspicious about the fact that he spent as an intellectual its not that we all agree about certain things. Its about being a contact cantankerous individual. We can write about would change the world but we are going to be able to work on it. I was at the march on washington here this past saturday and ive been involved not as a summer job that is a real thing, no disrespect. I also know what it means to be suspicious and skip tickle is to be suspicious and skeptical of your own thinking and your own thoughts, their own surety in your own certitude. Thats what it means to be an intellectual come to raise questions about it. Its not that you dont land a particular round. Your position and willingness to defend it but it does mean your fit moores ethical. You have to have a little bit more humility about i could be wrong. I believe this is the decision but im willing to engage and negotiate. Is the difference between a barack obama is going to say im going to reach across the aisle even though ive had many disagreements with president obama especially in the book i wrote a year ago by this presidency but at the same time its a different gesture of openness than one might donald trump where id know what to do and i have all the answers. As a public intellectual and as a thinker i think what her responsibilities is to raise questions that are troubling both of the dominant culture and you dont have to explain to them although in this book im preaching because im trying to convert people. Im unapologetic about that. Tanehisi coates is not a believer and i understand that. Their truce that can be generated from that great i come from the side of the aisle im trying to reach you. Yes i want to explain to you. If you dont understand let me break it down for you because i feel sympathetic to some white people who say you tried to throw me in the river im swimming but can you give me a lifeboat and can you give me something to hang onto . Out of an affable spirit we ought to engage people about what we think. Some black people think one way and some black people think another way and some people are not curious about or concerned with the impact of a certain representation of culture and others are only that. There is a Great Variety within the black community itself but in this book as you know i also not only talk about white others and sisters i talk about light versus dark and i feel like in church turn to your neighbor and say you happen to have two one goodlooking and the other another guy. So the light versus dark, my daddy was blueblack. I saw how he was judged. Thats among black people. Some curious, dont let your Children Play too long in the sun that might get dark or in dont let your darkskinned child marry another darkskinned person because of the analysts that we internalize. I deal with the class differences might deal with the. These are all kinds of percolating forms of bigotry and tribalism that married themselves at the heart of our own and i want to grapple with that as well but at the end of the day im about unapologetic this is what i think you need to do and im trying to answer at long last the questions of the white almond with malcolm x who came to him but a good hard heart a young white woman asked what can i do and welcome exsaid nothing and then turned around. I understand sometimes you feel like that. That kind of the day. You are a leader in your lack of got to tell you again a million times but my solution is if somebody asks, talk to them. Somebody wants to know speak to them because thats a man i want to know certain things about semitism. I have tried to be an enlightened feminist but i know like white liberals like to say that how great a man i am. Im with you women and then i just am freer to do it in teacher akel left and right. Stop out here. So what that might mean so what white voters and citizens are asking we should report that curiosity but we also report their desire to know how to do better. We also want the challenge. We cant just take you and say thats great because then some white folk will take refuge in the fact that i am unlike donald trump. White liberals can be some of the biggest problems and obstacles because they are convinced of their rightness and they are on the right side and that keeps them from doing the serious work of interrogating how racial cynicism perpetuates itself. Those are the things that i think are important. And preaching for a long time so thats just what i have been doing. [applause] to those who havent picked up the book yet structure of the sermon which is a book i can appreciate in last of the call to worship be going to the hymns appraise into open up the section of the book lorna hill, tupac. This is a book by the way dedicated to Beyonce Knowles and for launch as well. This section opens with a quote from wb du bois. Says what are these songs and what do they mean . They are the music of an unhappy people of the children of disappointment. Death and suffering and unvoiced longing towards a truer world. One thing you grapple with in this book and this will be a twopart question. What you grapple with the society of truth. At one point you right whiteness is not real. Getting to what you talked about earlier a concept of a social structure even though we know racism is an invented concept overlaid in our lives. Talk about exposing your white parishioners to black culture. To the hymns the deal with the police and deal with oppression and deal with pain and trauma and why is that an essential doorway into understanding black this . Thats a fine mind operator right there. Thats a great point. I will take the latter first and back my way into the second. I think white others and sisters here are some of the music and bless their hearts, and its not their hearts but they hearts. They say i dont understand it. Welcome to older black people. What in the heck are you saying . If you, but it generation like i did Nat King Cole was used for allocation classes at jewel europes. Dont know what to do. Everything you say chestnuts roasting on an open fire jack frost nipping at your nos. Yuletide carols being sung by a choir. Excuse me quacks what in the heck are you talking about future . And i love all the music. Its a nice little song. I dont think Scottie Pippen thinks so but thats on the other side. But those who have ears here. I come from a generation where a certain kind of player and logic motivated the sensibilities that were articulated in the music we listen to. There was purpose, there is vision. We get romantic about it. A lot of this was horrible and was not good. Aretha Franklin Associated with others but then you want to judge Aretha Franklin powerful pedigree against some now because it aint fair. A little stuff is great. I wanted to start with these songs so even if people couldnt understand what they are saying they are saying something poignant and powerful. When tupac said just the other day got lynched by some crooked cops and to this day there are cops and to be getting major pay we are paying the cops to knock the blacks out. You dont have to be a theorist to understand your own oppression. You are paying tax money to a cop who turns around and hurts you. When he says somebody wake me up from dreaming swimming upstream planted in the womb while screaming. On the top was my pop my mother hollering stopped. This is what they got . Not to disrespect my people but my papa was a loser andy vanessa seed agassi a plan for me stranded on welfare. Listen to the agony of jayz. Back when the police were al qaeda to black men. When people get riled up like i did this morning on cnn and i said compared to the experience of many black people in terms of police, how dare you, how dare you. Though you dont understand what im saying but im telling you the police have acted arbitrarily capriciously and wantonly and violently targeting certain people with weights and treatments and behaviors they would not give to others there was an Occupying Force that happened in the first interaction many black people had was to the police and they were often vicious and violent. Calling me drawing a gun and bringing the down on my back and threatening to kill me. That is terror to us. The police were like al qaeda to us because they were visiting violence upon us for no good reason no justification. I wanted the music to resonate. She cant be black, is she black . Why is it that we have the trance generate . Why cant we be black and universal . Abraham joshua has show doesnt have to give up peace. Heart of the paddock read the prophetic expression within a broader jewish tradition with a conception of humanity doesnt have to be dejewish iced it in order to be resonant with the conception of the universal. A particular is the universal. When you ask for a rose in you bring your beloved but they rose in a conception of grossness is the universal marmot what it means to be a rose. Thats a philosophical conception and i dont want to get bogged down but at the same time when you bring your boyfriend or girlfriend or rose you are bringing them the universal wrapped up in a particular so why said black people have to stop things like in order to be human . I want White Brothers and sisters to see the agony and reef. Bob dylan got an nobel prize and i cant wait until jayz gets one. My rhyming is a vitamin without a capsule. Never put me in your box. Thats nice suddenly i had a fever. Was it mere summer madness . The closer i get the better it sounds. My mind starts to activate and rhymes collaborate. When i heard that beat i have to meet. I fell into the roof of the wax and i said how can i move the crowd first of all aint no mistakes allowed. These cats drink champagne like blades on the Ship Breaking about who is has the fly is chained. Even after all my logic in my theory i had it costs roads cuss words for you that ignorant people hear me. There is deplored i wanted a pain in the reef and the sorrow and the suffering of humanity to resonate and that to me back to your broader point about what is truth, thats up difficult question and a philosophical question. I train to princeton where professor of philosophy said the recent can no longer be that philosophy can no longer be the tribunal of pure reason put forward to other disciplines genuflect and acknowledge. Its rival with bustamante on what is true and not to have to be worked out by an objective. Our medium point of objectivity and im saying we down here in Westmont Amare down here in the ground we dont see we see from the worms eye view and in that worms ive you that truth is what we make of it and thats what we know of it paid so we say to brothers and sisters these are the truth we have had to grapple with. This is the pain and agony we have been confronted with. This is the mortality we are ever forced to confront. When i think about that truth there is not one i knew being truth that will be true now on forever but their truth generating with event context of our own existence where we know things to be real and to be true to be powerful to operate in a certain way. If you have the power to make what you believe to be sure you are in a gray sea but if what you do has not been authorized by the seat of people look at it suspiciously and skeptically and lacrosse site you than you are seen as the blip on the screen. Youre part of an inferior species for thinkers and believers and human beings. I wanted to challenge some of that stuff in i want white mothers and sisters to think more seriously about what that might mean. The tradition of politics and prose in its participatory setup i want to open up the floor to questions of people who have questions if you want to begin lining up at think we have two microphones and as you get there i want to try to move through as many as possible. We always say statements send an email but your question is rapid. As people start to line up towards the end of the book you go through and lay out what you believe is a pathway forward for White Americans and that consists of three major points. The first is the idea providing reparation or harm that has been done in the second is to educate themselves about experiences throughout the history of black trauma and third as white people that have a responsibility to school their own white druthers and sisters in these areas as well. I thought that was fascinating and im sure they will come up with questions so im going to shut up. I like that summary. Im going to use that in the future. Im kevin mcnair from washington. Given where we are right now in america and the preparation is interesting to me. Are there two messages, one for White America ordered twoweek have a different conversation . Thats a great point and its always good to see you, man. Look i wrote a bunch of books for black people. Im like jayz if you like my old music listened to my old music but i want something new. But im talking to black folks. I have heard from them, people who have read the book, my god, thank you. Thank god yahweh the great one, moses and everybody else. The postmodern gospel, we are in the same vote. We are struggling for meaning and so there are many africanamerican people many black people and people of color who say finally somebody saying what we want to be said. I dont think they feel they are voiceless here but they also understand its time to also stretch out and engage white mothers and sisters more directly to direct my language to them and i use the word love it throughout here. They think im trying to beat them down. Its very challenging in a serious way. God bless you just the way you are but god bless you too much to leave you that way. [laughter] if you didnt get a right the first time, try again god. The evolutionary process of process theology aside the reality is that White Brothers and sisters have to come to a sense of who they are over the longhaul and provide one particular take up one particular black man thinking about the world which we live. Im not exhausted and im not exclusive for laming to be the only voice but i have a voice in either perspective and i think its happens to resume resonates with those who identify with me as a black person. White brothers and sisters you can see the part of their cultures struggles and trials in what im doing here. I dont think of black people to listen on the site within the good service you will hear a lot of people simultaneously. Possess. I play for parents and the imagine the different future, the book from which we draw so much intensity from africanamerican stories, from the hebrew bible. People ensconced in niche of oprogression where they imagine their with out of where they were. Not them or so were giving birth to possibility in the womb ofs our minds and souls by nurturing the belief that whatever were confronting now will not exhaust the infinite capacity for hope. So number one, you know, as my pastor said, we have already come through what we have come to. We have been here before. The reason david can goliath. He knew he beat some bears and lions before and you have to fight the best way you know how. The tried to put the armor on him, didnt work. You have to fight if youre not a person who believes in spirits you have to fight with hiphop or country music. Love them all. Love the country boys and girls, their lyrics, sense of ionup. Ive going to walk across my lawn at take off your shoes. Hey, lady, youre husband is cheating on your or all my exs live in texas and i police in i live in tennessee. If killed you when i met you i would have been in jail by now. So theres irony and parody and signifying goes on, the orthodont are lifesafer and we must not reduce the complexity of our situation to the event we confront. If your for you donald trump reps an an albatross, that is scary, but acknowledge that and acknowledge there ircountervails forces that you mulls be reflecting and be more active. We were pass enough under the last guy. Have to be more active. That recesssive gene has to come forward. We have to also remember to a lot of people on the other side who are scared, too. They dont know what is going on, trying to figure it out. So we have to forge links with them, in one sense, but at the same time we got to have honest conversation. Yall helped to create this stuff, to. So we have to be responsible. Interesting, we talk about Political Correctness and everything except speaking to the dominant whitemasters. Donald trump says when we can no longer be politically correct, okay, so do you want to hear the truth about it whiteness . No, no, no. Right in Political Correctness is all over white culture. White folk dont have to hear the truth about what black folk really think about you. Or brown folks. You dont really want to hear what people of cor be saying about you. I gave a couple of nuggetted in the book. Didnt want to be called a traitor to the race but black folk and brown folk when the master came in, this lemonade tastes good. Oh, i mutt something extra in there for you,master, ace green, little green trae before you new watt green tea was. Aborting babies before i be a slave ill be workers slow down. They were ways in which the practice of resistance manifested itself. So, to there ways in which we have to tell the truth about what White Brothers and stirs not acknowledging the degree to which they have been invested and asleep the wheel. All of us have been. But third this his is the time when White Brothers and sisters have to go to the thanksgiving meal and confront your people. You know granny be saying stuff that is crazy. Im a plowed support ore black lives black lives matter and grabis calling black people niggers. So you dont have to break her off. Look, grande, im going to bust a cap in you right now if you say that again. You got to get the turkey first. You got to get the dressing or stuffing as you might call it, the macaroni and cheese but you say thats not best way to think about black people. You mad at willie but look at what mediocre white cousin who doesnt deserve to be having in get agency. Interrogate, think about, push back on in a way and thats a metaphor. In white circled thinks you can do that wees lawrie cant reach. Theyll hear you and you have a special responsibility, i chargous in is meeting minds and the marriage of our sensibilities i charge you as a minister go forthinto the world of whiteness and challenge it. Try to stay alive and still get paid. Dont be crazy with it. Dont come do me like you made me homeless and i have no job and im working for you now, dyson. Jim jim any jim any cricket. Move beyond your comfort soap and if we do that i think we can survive donald trump. With sir individual pharaoh and harrod and hitler, we can survive donald trump as well. We have time for two more questions. Oh, my god two more question. Ill make it fast. Can we do a speed round of jeopardy in i will just go yes, no, maybe. I dont know. Okay. Great. So my question is kind of about, like, when you start to embrace your White Brothers and sisters. Ive had growing up a lot of white friends and colleagues who start to hang out so much with black people that they start thinking i use the nword now and do this and that, and one officer my girlfriends said its not fair you have the cool music and the cool fraternities and are so sororities and im blank. People shed their fact they are an ethnic group and i guess my question is do you see maintain in the horizon where were going to have to let good of the things that some of the stuff we love, like the nword, and in order to really get to this other place in humanity where we all recognize race is a construct and we have forgotten. How can we let good of race as construct if we forget. Im from a different generation. You look a little younger than me. A couple years. Looking good. Thanks. I think white folk have grown. Grow up. Im not going to infantilize white. You cant word the word nigger. Im not giving it up. We can do so much with it. Black people explain nigger, mad, nigger, happy, or suspicious. Nigger. Soso many so many ways that are send sewell we use the word, and white folks should have to listen and cant participate. One of the compensatory values and virtues of black culture that white people have to hear black people say niggr but you invented it. You dont mess it up, hey, nigger. No, no dont be doing that. Part of the problem with hiphop music us that red foxx, when the used nigger was saying on a party record in your basement. Now snoop dogg say it. Just people who dont know the squabbles among black people in america and white folk get struggles, talk about my nigger. So you have a problem and youre pointing to Something Real but in america i do not think wen infan tallize white people. People think i could just used that word. Yall started it dog. Youite when youror lynching people and castrating people. So the way gay lesbians use some words between themselves. Im around women all the time that call eve other b and i if use it i would get smacked in my face. Theying go, did you say that . And i would go, yes, i no, no, no, no. That not your word. Now, that not even a comparable or parallel situation because nigger has a unique register in the context of america. What interests me is that black people think that words are no powerful and dynamic when they say, lets bury the nword. If you burrity like jesus it will raise up on the third day. Nigger i thought i buried you. Im with you always until the end of the world where i am you may be niggers to. So i dont think you ininfantize white people. Of you use it its wrong and its part 0 a roycesive in the africanamerican culture, you can use that. Do you think by you not using the word youve have denied legitimate si and permission to white folk to do it . You must have super blackness. That aint how it work. And ill tell this to white people. Give you a once and for all lifetime target, right here tonight. You give us all your billions and trillions of dollars, give us all the advantages that accrue to white consciously and unconscious hi and for one day only you can use nigger as much as you want. If we got the bank, if the got in the major institutions and are president of every Major Ivy League and other schools, if we run everything yall run now, you see how ludicrous that is . As mike tieson might say. How ridiculous in the that is. The marketplace of idealsening not bear it. Whiteness is such aen enormous privilege to simply deny the legitimacy of a by refusing to use the word nigger around them exist to capitulate and be surrendering to a behavior that produced donald trump. I want you to sigh what want to say perspective you say anything other than that im going to be mad. Thats the kind of immature whiteness we need to confront and i think ultimately to contain and destroy. [applause] thank you. Good evening. Good evening. So, in the soul of black folks, author wed due duboys says the following. After the egyptian and indian, the greek and the romans, the two month goalans. The neglect degree is a seven inflame son, born with a veil and gifted with second sight, world which yells home no self conscious but only lets hem sigh himself in the revelation of the world. Always lookses a ones self other threw through the eyes of another. One never fields his teunis and american, a negro two souls two, thoughts, two unreconcilabilities striving to odiles in one dark body. Keeped it from being torn asunder. In question is, to what extent if at all do you find the concept of double consciousness to be relevant and or useful to understanding our current social and racial landscape; and perhaps by fence your own work. Very sharp, very sharp. A great quote. Its a great idea. You have a great voice. Hell he, how are you. The very white consecutive of your general d the very white of your generation. Duboys talk about seeing yourself through the eyes of the other. Meditate on everything you said. The we can preach on that what does its mean to forever see yourself through the eyes of somebody else . How White Brothers and sisters see you. How donald trump sees you. How the government sees you. How the Larger Society sees you . How the portray you as a first lady who is mean and nasty because you say for the first time in your life, you feel good about your country because theyre actually giveogy a fair shake, and how dare you, and youre a harvard graduate and princeton graduate but to see yourself through the eyes of other and those are the fortunate feeling grows. What about the average percentage who has no stand organize pedigree, forever seen through the eyes of somebody else. Not somebody else. An opponent, somebody is invested in seeing you in a distorted faction. Can you imagine during the height of nazi germany for jewish brothers brothers and sit to be seen through the i eye of rampant fascist and nazi identities . They were. What happened when they were is that they were sent to their deaths, committed to both physical death but there was an attempt to kill a culture, to murder an idea. To eviscerate an entire construction of humanity. That what the consequence is. Speed up to what we think about what deboys was picking about and if we do a comparative analysis dont want to engage in be care below what that late great theories Barbara Christian talks boy progression derby. Is i was so poor that, i used to that. We couldnt pay attention. Come on now. But one of the differences in the holocaust verse slavery is when happen head 20th nature you have photographic evidence to a certain degree and you have the remark like the regard when you have visual tim to the inhumanity and the dem machineon eyesizing. Imagine if we had twitter during the slavery. The slaves would say, so hot out here i aint pick nothing more cotton. Can you imagine those tweets . No, facebook book, face the book and rate. Im done. Imagine if you had some kind of testimony, maybe, maybe White Brothers and stirs would feel a bit more empathy for what we dealt with. Maybe if there was a film of a castration or a lynching, we see the post cards that were handed out by white people who were into dem menned in their own thick racism that they wanted to photograph and, therefore, visually conjure the infamous renunsation of their humanity by passing out a card to mark their disscent into nothing nothing n descent into nothingness. Imagine those people being responsible for seeing you. Imagine an administration that gives for the attorney general a man who called black people niggers who thought about them as boys are said the worse offense of civil rights was the people who tried to defend it. Imagine in the west wing, a bigot a person who maked an idol of his or her commitment imagine a bigot in the west wing whose responsibility is to advise the president , who is poisoned by the wreck cal strands of a visual denial of humanity to block people the fundamental level. And yet it is through his eyes that Public Policy will look at black people. So, yes, think he is quite relevant. I think the passage you read to warring ideals who dose dog it street alone keepedment from being torn asunder. The nationals the refuseal to give up and when the young woman talk about having a kind of black reality because of white whiteness was blank. Theirs a when to see the broad humanity and depth of our psychic commitment to civility in all kind 0 horror when the people charleston had their loved oned guy before any agency moved, they offered forgiveness as a preemptive strike, against the vicious resurgence of racial hostility against, give thing victory to that other, what they did was flip the script. You have seen us as not flotsam and jetsam of life and you will and now we offer you our love and forgiveness in advance to cansel out your lack of humanity. So deboyce there, understood that part of the answersed in the very humanity of the people who were being claimed to be not human. And when i take a look across the wide span of Human History and the epic tide of grove that washes grief that washes over us now im reminded of the simple humanity that every average black person has. So i preach to White America, dough shoot it, youre coiling people who are beautiful, wonderful, loving, affirming human beings, you gets did on the internet and dress up like gangster, too. Youve did it when you were children. Dont hold to account a person who is growing as the ultimate statement of their identity when you dont get judged by just a little part of who you are. So, yes, that statement resonates with me and for me and i think debois. 19 03. Essays, bringing them knowing that the ryan this problem this problem of the color line andss in s resides in our humanity. Thank you. [applause] they had said two more but were going to squeeze one in. Thank you. Professor dyson, i appreciate your words. Im a former student of yours from Brown University when i was 18 and really inspired to at brown . At brown. My goodness. To start thinking critically and i appreciate that. Im a mother now of a threeyearold child and i have been following the confirmation hearings for the secretary offef education and knowing right now American Public schools are as segue degree grated as the war in the 19 1960s. Wonder how we can foster culture of understanding and communication humanism amongst our children when were basically growing a generation that doesnt know each other. Wont be in School Together with one another and were kind of recreating the same societies that our parents fought against. Yes, maam. Thank you for that. You dont look a day older than when you were the school. That good black dont crack. Um, still very intelligent. Its dicouraging, isnt it . With read sister jones powerful argument about the resegregation of american education. That this gives not the deliberate lies to obama insis tent you have to say. Race relations are better under me. Oh, okay. If you say so. But for real, though, dog, not so much. Not your fault. You are as genial and affable a black man is exist. If you dont dig obama, aint a brother you dont dig. Gain going happen in this lifetime. Maybe res wetly lawrie is one. What is interesting is that Race Relations have gotten worse bus obama provoked a sustained consternation. He flushed the bigots out. So it is to know chagrin and not to hick peril that he would acknowledge that under his administration, the racism and the annie mouse renewed again blackness has found a lethal because he was so good at being what he was. A president who was speaking to the needs of the nation. Universal health care, bailed out the automobile industry, put this economy on a sure standing, brought literacy back. If Justin Timberlake brought sexy back, he brought reading back to the white house. The oval office was alive with ideas. Were there again and, yet, this vicious resurgence can be attributed the fact that this extraordinary back man was a point person along a lodgerrer trajectory, flash point in a benighted horizony where hiss emergence wassed of our renewed association with racial progress and the very sign that we refuse to good any further. So, when i think about the schools the resegregation, the students go near the brown vs. Board of education, thats unacceptable and as the brilliant statement wasmate made by my former student, that how are these kids going know each other . They dont play together dont talk together. Dont engaging etch each other. When people of different races and ethnicities and religion and cull toward ghetto as kid, they dont know. Why we know race is a social construct. Up dont know as a kid until your daddy says dont play with them or your mom says dont go that way. That give youve that body language, that nudge that, gesture affirmation of your enclosed and cloistered existence. So we know that one beautiful thing about going to school with each ice that your learn to talk to each other and learn to love each other and forge bonds and speak across axes of race and class and its a here horror some i think the woman who be confirmed for secretary of education, my lord. Dont want white folk to say nothing else about affirmative action. I dont want to hear it, dog itch dont want to hear it. Im talking about your narrow concept. Aint talking about real affirmative action which i the attempt to redress historic inick witnesses in race and gender because when you people other able people and white women into the stew, white people benefit from affirmative action already more black people and brown people. That number one. Thats the sheer statistic. But number two, im talking about the stereotypical notion of what at the time affirmative as option is, hooking somebody up with something they dont deserve. Two word nodder you. Donald trump. He done human being up more incompetent white folk since gill gill begans island. The professor and marian here on dill guy gill began sorry, now they could never get off the island. Dude, its a set in hollywood. You want to get im sorry. Thats unfair. What is Rex Tillerson really know about being secretary of state . And look the vicious sexism against hillary clinton. We didnt even remark on it. We knew about the racism against obama. We cant even speak about the sex equipment against hillary clinton. It what so normalized we didnt remark on it. She had more smartness in heir Little Finger than mr. Trump posed in the ever thinning of his holding on hair. And then excuse the ad hominem but i made an exception then here we are, all these white folk and a brother already let call that the low expectation the soft bigotry of bro expectation. So, now weve got people who are incompetent for the job to which they are assigned in charge. Of the american welfare. The bench gentleman the Benjamin Franklin has been subverted by the intense metastasize craig of whiteness gone amok and now our children are diss as venged by hucksters and billionaires. Tycoons in charge of what they dont no and you oh can the White Working Class vote for a man who is not only drained the swamp but refueled it. Filed it up against with some slimy okra. And nefarious, scandalridden practices, and the name of i want to say this to white working place Martin Luther king was in jail in birmingham, been arrested. The white warden said during king youre wrong about segregation and dr. King new let me ask you one thing, my brother. I gave a speech about having a dream. Had a dream right now. I dont want to talk to you about that. I want to ask you what youre making in your wages. Then they told him him was like, hell, yall into be marching with us. You are just as bad off as negroes are. King said. You are just in the same economic boat as us. So what makes the White Working Class person vote against his or her interest . They keep asking block folk wife why the vote democrat. What are white, wog which is people vote fog a millionaire. Lost the popular vote. By definition thats not pop pop list. That democratic destiny and geographical con continue general see base oden an you thought one man one vote, one woman, one vote. Sorry, aint really like that. So now in the midst of this, White Brothers and sisters are confronted with the most egregious example, the most flagrant offense of affirmative action with people get thing hookup for to other reason than theyre white and they assist the rebellion on the White Working Class. Theres a brun and black working class, a red and yellow working class. The very people i end by saying thats and connected to the school thing. The very white liberals who join in with everybody else in opostmortem of the election, we should get beyond identity politics. Really . Was that the lesson . All politics have identitied. If theyre yours you do you seep the. All politics from airport to too thele aristotle and plate have to been about the nature and before identity but that identity was whited and therefore ruled universal and seen as human and invisible. And so identity politics, im disits point in the Bernie Sanders when hi says, its easier to talk about racism and sexism than it is to talk about goldman sachs. Mr. Sanders, love you but what world you living in, sir . This is why Bernie Sanders on the left was akin to not the same as, donald trump on the right. Older white men who understand race in a specific fashion and who cannot contend with its cantankerous specificity and the scandal it demands accountability. We know donald trump is reese resistant but Bernie Sander is, too. He wanted to subsume race underclass. Race hates class hurt more. White poverty is not the same as black and brown poverty. Win youre white and poor you have al concern it within the society. When youre black and brown and poor, theres concentrated poor. The school is poor, the neighborhood is pool, the parents have poor jobs and the kids are poor. So sociologically peeking. White working class is an adjective modifying a noun in an ostensibly post identity politics world heownappealing to identity politics. While people who are poor and working class have been sold a bill of gots. Deboise talk about the you might be working that lump but at least youre not a nigger. Noer not infear youre. So they held on to it as compensatory wage against the Barrons Barrons barrons and tike kuhn tycoons who i want the walk working ago there see that donald trump is not your friends and the school of our nation should be the sea seabed for the reed reeducation of america. The pressure of segregation is an extension of our blindness and our inwillingness to see what we must challenge that. Dont just send your kids to schooled that are beyond the district i know you dont want could use cower kid a social experimented but luke out temperature children of those who dont have whatover. Maylike the Public Education renexts the values you fine important. Make sure the tax base can be, if you will, underwritten by your efforts and where those tax bases cannot be unwritten by your efforts make sure you involve in politics that change the world we live in and people who are in control will not opponent people like the present secretary of education who will reinforce voucher and cher where pick over Public Education and leave the masses of Americans Society and their children unaddressed and, therefore, severely undereducated. Ill stop in my head. That what i would say off the top of my head about that. [applause] the book is tears we cannot stop a sermon to White America lets hear it one more time. Hell be around to sign the book. Thank you, thank you. [applause] thank you. Very kind of you. Very kind of you. Thank you. Mgive it up for wesly laurie. [applause] thank you, and thank you all for joining us. Well move straight into the book signing. If you have a number on your ticket between 1 and 150, please join us in line, and there are additional copies of all the book i by wesley and Michael Eric Dyson in the lobby where you entered. Thank you. [applause]