Customer Reviews

The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

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4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dyson on BookTV impressed me to death, so I decided to pick up this book. It's not that I didn't know racism existed (I'd have had to have lived in a bubble), but it seems to me that Dyson gets to the center of things quickly and incisively. His experience, though by no means the same as mine (protected and downright cushy), nevertheless jived scarily closely to my observations. I particularly applaud his puncturing of the "bootstrap" mentality and his emphasis on the far more realistic view that we all depend on one another and that we have obligations not only to ourselves and to our family, but also to our society. These obligations are in the nature of debts for help we have received. This, of course, has been known ever since Dickens (and probably Jesus) at least. The Rugged Individualist is never completely alone. I've had the advantage of great schools and wonderful teachers, as well as people I've never met who've helped me. This is to me Dyson's best idea. Just of my own interests, I liked the arts essays best. To me, Dyson's is a mind I want to spend more time with.

When all is said and done, living under the umbrella of a racist society takes a depressing toll on and is inevitably unsettling to us all. Judging by Michael Eric Dyson's Reader, it seems that the most psychic damage is done to the "so-called" black intellectual than to anyone else in our society.

It is a truism seldom expressed openly that since Freud, there are no more secrets: everything is transparent. Every hustler's hold card can now be peeked at.

Whites, hustling American society have no choice but to live out their lives retreating from the only thing that gives them a sense of meaning and identity, their only rallying cry to group solidarity: the long dark self-defining shadow of white supremacy. They have nowhere to hide; it defines them; it is the only (inner or outer) garment they have. It is who they are. It defines the parameters of their humanity.

They are condemned to defend its evils whether they want to or not: forever trying to innocently (and with great detachment and no sense of taint) explain why it happened; ever wishing and hoping that no one looks at all the tangible and intangible perks, advantages, prerogatives and privileges they still accrue from it. And pretending not to remember that this unmitigated evil of inhumanity remains the gravity that controls the American cultural universe.

From an early age, the indispensable life skill for whites (even today, as it was at the founding of this nation), is forgetting that everything meaningful they value and believe in has already been fatally compromised and corrupted by, or remains inextricably tied to a six hundred-year culture of racism.

Whites must learn at an early age to deny (or worse yet, how to be content living with) the fact that beyond racism, there is nothing else to "being white." Through racism, whites have raped their own humanity from the inside out: Nothing meaningful is left but excuses, bombast, false claims and the elevation and objectification of superiority by fiat. In the end, it is all so much smoke and mirrors. Racism has made American humanity a smoldering dessert. Only the outer shell of humane existence remains. Look at what happened in New Orleans with hurricane Katrina?

Why can't black intellectuals like Dyson and Cornel West come out and say this, straight up? Why are they always pussyfooting around the edges, teasing us; pretending that they want to be us; want to represent us. They want to be everything to us: They are all preachers, rappers, graduates of the "hood," etc. ad infinitum. [Freud would have a lot to say about all this internal confusion of our black intellectuals.]

I'll tell you why they cannot say it, because for blacks, the existential reality (and crisis) of living under the shadow of racism is even more complicated than for whites. We must, one and all, live out the duality W.E.B. du Bois warned us about; inevitably coming to realize and then eventually admitting to ourselves that we are both the "subjects" and "objects" of this "intentional man made American" evil.

The largest problem for blacks at all rungs of the class ladder (from Dyson's jailed brother to his own life in the ivory league towers) is coming to grips with the fact that being "in" America is not quite the same as being "of" America. And that quite frankly, there has yet to be worked out a formula for finally resolving this national existential dilemma.

Those at the bottom of that socio-economic ladder seem to have less of a problem accepting and then living with this reality. They know somehow through societal osmosis that most of America is a carefully orchestrated sham. There is no melting pot. America's puffed up and false claims about democracy, equality and freedom, etc. whether viewed in Dyson's terms of context, subtext, and pretext; or whether just intuited from everyday experiences on the streets are little more than expressions of white internal and personal weaknesses projected onto the larger national screen.

Poor blacks surrender to this racist reality because they accept the fact that they are just too weak to do otherwise. They don't get caught up in believing in any white nonsense or fantasizing about their own personal relationship to it; they just deal with it as best they can and go on trying to carve out a meaningful life.

However, for Black intellectuals and the black upper classes more generally, it is quite a more complicated matter. Even though they too must realize at some level that they will forever only be "in" and not "of" America, they are nevertheless desperately rehearsing for the day they will become full members in good standing in the great white hero system. This yearning is palpable and is a very ugly spectacle.

Pretending to forget that it cannot be done (at least not without the self-defeating result of advancing the causes of racism: look at Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas for example). These intellectuals forge ahead nevertheless, reciting their bios and singing out their resumes and curriculum vitas as they go, so that whites can clearly distinguish them from "those other blacks."

They are ever engaging in pseudo and meaningless debates on abstract ideas of democracy and political theory; engaging in literary criticism and matters of letters and the arts; serving as high officials in and consultants to the government and industry; and otherwise acting as if they were "under" rather than "outside" the great white tent. They do this only to prove to whites and to themselves that they are worthy of being dubbed "honorary whites," if only during the day.

The deeper they find themselves trapped in the belly of this self-annihilating existential beast, the more denial is required of them.

Michael Eric Dyson follows to a tee the well-worn script of the well-paid black intellectual, in residence. Intellectually he is the real deal: He is bright articulate, well read and OVER-understands the America of which he speaks.

But he too is intellectually and culturally, conflicted (and need I say compromised; that is bought and paid for). The result is a confusing kind of self-censorship. Like his conflicted mentor and intellectual hero Cornel West, Dyson knows where the waters edge is and knows when and how to pull his punches. Although these essays are VERY GOOD they are nothing if not a study in "how to pull ones intellectual punches."

He doesn't want to "speak power to racism;" so much as to "go on tour with it." Like "three card monty," racism is the only real game in town and the name of the game if you are "the token" in the ivory towers of the university is to milk that cow man, milk it; don't unveil it; don't help destroy it; don't fight it; don't make the white power structure too uncomfortable with it; just milk it.

Say anything you like so long as you don't shake the money tree too hard. Don't say "white racism;" say racism. Admit that there was racism in the past but only progress today. Be politically correct: there is no difference between racism and all of the other "isms." Put them all into the same bag. Stay on the abstract plane, don't get to specific and everything will be all right. The black masses won't know the difference anyway --especially if you continue to preach, rap, swagger and praise Jesus and some black woman for all of your success. If you do this all will be right with the world.

And don't forget, if your rhetoric allows whites to sleep at night, to continue enjoying their ill-gotten gains with equanimity, you too might yet get your ticket punched and who knows, you might even end up permanently under the tent of the "Great White Hero System" yourself.

Five stars.

Michael Eric Dyson comes with pure fire. He is a living legend. I have read numerous articles by him, heard and seen him on TV and radio programs, and perused a few books of his, such as Open Mike, Why I Love Black Women, Between God and Gangsta Rap, but until now, I had never owned a copy, just used my library card or sat at the bookstore, but I can say in all earnest: Dyson is certified. He does not care for props, is disinterested with intellectual pretensions, zealously combats elitism, sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. I don't even need to delineate what a raconteur he is, it goes without saying. What I love most about Dyson is how he is able to understand that be it a Kanye West track All Falls Down or Wittgenstein's close to Tractatus, the sheer religosity of a Prince performance, or B Cosby appeasing white people at the cost of others, at the expense of his own dignity and so-called humanism, or affirmative action, etc., that it all exists on the same plane, and he approaches each with due respect and consideration. I can't say more. This is a real nice compilation of his work, and a good intro to anyone into reading Dyson. His piece on El DeBarge is missing, or else I'd give it 5 stars. I give it 4.75 instead. From a young cat, university student, to quote Q-Tip, again: Michael Eric Dyson is "certified." Peace.

Dyson's book is intellectual fancy footwork at its delicious best. But in the end it too is all but sound and fury about nothing. These very fresh and eclectic essays explain everything but resolve nothing. There is no return address for those responsible for screwing up Western Civilization so badly.

Except for an impassioned appeal to return to Christian love and to expand the paradigm of Christian understanding (most eleganly expressed in his outline of Homoerotic Theology), Dyson's intellectual two-step continues to beg the questions: who is responsible and what is to be done about the moral mess made of America and more generally, Western Civilization?

Dyson is nothing if not an "intellectual devil" busy digging up and kicking up dust in all of the wrong places (the OJ trial, MLK plagialism and womanizing, Black preachers womanizing, ect.) "Braindead America" needs nothing more badly than it needs an intellectual provocatuer like Dyson--a veritable font of new ideas: the man's mind is on fire!

However, it is not enough to go about willy-nilly across the American landscape slaying easy to kill dragons and flailing at easily targetable sacred cows. The real intellectual challenge is to do what Robert Jensen at the University of Texas at Austin has done: Put your intellectual money where your intellectual mouth is: Put that powerful intellect in service to solving problems and into making fundamental changes in this bankrupt American way of life. [Look at New Orleans, for Gods sake?]

It is easy enough, if you are a black intellectual to take the moral highground and rain down sortie-after-sortie upon America's 51st state--the State of Denial--but it is quite another task to admit that had Christianity itself not been sound asleep at the wheel, we might NOW have a very different kind of America.

While whites continue to wallow (scared to death) in their privilege and prerogatives (while Rome burns), black intellectuals like Dyson and Cornel West stay as close to them as possible, ever-jabbing them in the sides hoping that some of the crumbs from the tree of privilege will fall upon them.

This is a hellava way to fight racism, sexism, homophobism, and all other brands of chauvinism but what else can they do? Black intellectuals have the elitist racist "neocons" on one side and the elitist racist "liberals" on the other, and the elitist racist Christians in the middle. They are hemmed-in on all sides. No wonder all they do is flail, Don Quioxite-like at the racist American windmills.

But if they keep flailing, they too will eventually find their footing. Please keep flailing.

Five stars!!

This is an excellent book by an excellent Author! I will collect all of his books.

This is writing (and thinking) of both a very high and a very low order -- and should be read for both reasons. Dyson hits his stride in this varied (and sometimes uneven) collections of essays and is most eloquent and convincing in his deconstruction of "whiteness" and "black maleness" and in his discussions of some of the most destructive consequences of each.

He is most ineloquent (almost disingenuously so), when analyzing and giving a curious and gratuitous defense of black feminism. Clearly his heart is not in it. Indeed, one is prompted to ask where all this groveling at the feet of black women comes from in today's male black intellectuals? Do their black feminist friends inveigh upon them to do this? Are all of their wives black feminists? Or, is it all just part of the multiple whippings that black men get as part of their normal socialization in American society (mother-whipped, police-whipped, bible-whipped, and pussy-whipped)?

It is here, as a ventriloquist's voice for the black feminism Cause that Dyson decides to camp out and make what can only be termed a dead man's stand - an existentialist position without either legitimacy, dignity, honor or honesty. Like other black male intellectuals of his ilk, Dyson uses black feminism (instead of authentic black maleness) as a base for establishing his own intellectual persona and ethnic bona fides - perhaps trying too hard to make a last gasp effort to establish a linkage between the sexes of an ever-dying black community.

It is a curious posture indeed for a black male (let alone a black male intellectual) to assume, given that his own much-maligned group, black males, has no voice in the national conversation (of which he is a prominent and critical part). Does he not realize that unless and until he has made a case for his own subgroup, he cannot respect himself or be respected by others (including by black feminists)? What is all this black male self-sacrifice all about? Guilt? Self-hatred? Oedepidal?

Two aspects of Dyson's analyses stick out like a sore thumb: How is it that he can defend the black feminism's negative position about the black male without first defending his own turf: black male personhood or black manhood? Is it that there is nothing within the black male camp worthy of defending? Is this not a curious kind of self-reflexive built in self-fulfilling prophesy of black male self-hatred being expressed by one of the leading black male intellectuals? How can (and why does) the best thinkers of the black male species so often (and reflexively) take such a position? Maybe it is the same reason they also all become Jack-leg preachers?

Second, why after a scathing analysis of and deconstruction of whiteness does he stop short of advocating the coup de grace recommended by White Studies scholars: abandoning whiteness (as we understand it today) altogether?

In the first instance, although his defense of black feminism is curious, it is also hauntingly consistent with Dyson's own shakily displayed persona. He is a "jack-leg" Baptist Minister; three times divorcee from black women; Ivy League professor, ex-welfare recipient, ex-street hustler, staunch defender of rappers and black street life, etc. -- existing in a social and professional no-man's land, a hostile milieu without firm ideology grounds on which to plant his own feet, straddling as he does so many fault lines in American society.

What comes through all too painfully clearly is that Dyson, as demonstrated by his own confused persona and inconsistent ideological stances, is himself in search of some solid uncontested, non-ideological ground upon which to plant his feet.

It is equally clear that the very intellect, which he so skillfully displays has cut him off (and aloose from) from the only ideological base he has: as a black man in racist America. This is the reality that Dyson seems to be trying desperately to escape and which seems to make him the most uncomfortable.

His way out of this dilemma is to adopt the same pose adopted by the much more harried white male, and pretend that there is no "authentic (positive) Black male" position to be had. His black maleness simply becomes, de facto, the backdrop (or to use his own term) the subtext upon which the larger drama of race is being played out in his own mind. What a curious (and unnecessary) stance for such a sharply honed intellect to take?

The problem with Dyson's own self-declared uncontested existential (non-)position is that THERE IS NO uncontested non-ideological ground to be had in American society: All of American social life is contested existential and ideological ground. All parts of America are at war with all of the other parts. And that is the existential reality with which all intellectuals, including black intellectuals, must deal.

Disingenuously juxtaposing and repositioning oneself next to black feminism does not "a whole human being make." That is, it neither resolves the dilemma between black men and black women, nor (and this is most important point) does it render black men more human and more alive, nor does it give black men a voice in the national dialogue.

Said more simply, it does not give black men a voice that is as independent as that of black women, and it does not make black men (more) acceptable human beings by denying their own existence in favor of praise for black feminism. In fact, arguably, it does just the opposite. It only exacerbates it and makes the author look as if he is trying too hard to be admitted in good standing to the only ethnic club his birth has already entitled him to.

The intra-ethnic sexual conflict within the black race remains and still runs very deep, with its own sordid genealogy. With black male intellectuals being too timid to speak openly and truthful for themselves or about this matter; and with black women being congenitally unable to do so, this leaves only the Willie Lynch memo, as apocryphal as it is, as the only honest analysis of the likely origin of black-on-black sexual strife available.

In short, wishful thinking, slight of hand, and moral smoke and mirrors does not solve Dyson's own existential problem as a black male intellectual in America cut away from his ethnic moorings. He still has no solid ground on which to stand either as a man, as an intellectual, or as a respected member of the black race.

The other problem with Dyson's analysis is that after exposing the fraud that has been cobbled together and that has evolved as white meaning, and thoroughly detailing its continuing destructive nature, Dyson warns against the complete dismantlement of it in favor of what he sees as a more humane form of whiteness. But he gives us no hints as to how whites are to get from being drunk on perks, privileges, entitlements, prerogatives and built-in advantages, to this more elevated state and meaning of whiteness. It seems to me Dyson's recommendation is just an escape through another open-ended fantasy, which if true, would just bring us full circle: That is how the white race, thorough white supremacy, got in this mess from the very beginning.

That said, although there are a lot of fireworks in these pieces, on the critical issues Dyson is always found wanting, or guilty of punting early. Nevertheless, he is an intellectual we cannot ignore. His pen is hot, and he has a lot to say, and says it well. Five stars

There's no real new ground breaking stuff here. The wit and eloquence mask work that is rather shallow. While the language is first rate and provocative, a careful analysis of the factual information presented shows a glaring omission of so many more facts that most of his premises are undermined when viewed in a larger, more realistic context.

The best way to put this in perspective is that this author is a black man from poor, humble beginnings who's trying to make a case for how it is impossible for blacks to succeed in the very society that has made him into the wildly successful multimillionaire, author, speaker, professor, radio personality he is today.

And the reason is the usual cop-out: it's someone else's fault.

Two stars for wonderful use of language.

echoing the first reviewer...i must say that in all earnest dyson is certifiably...insane. what a moron. knocking cosby for his incisive and right-on comments trying to wake up the black community from its slumber? dumb.