Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Michael Eric Dyson

Quote by 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 manifestation of both white supremacy, white refusal to acknowledge culpability, and the attempts of black people to re-describe the harm and trauma we've endured, as well as to say afresh what it is that must be done if we are to be conscientious.”

Quote by Michael Eric Dyson

Create image

Author

Michael Eric Dyson
Michael Eric Dyson

Michael Eric Dyson is an American author, academic, and public intellectual, born on October 23, 1958. He is recognized for his work in African American studies, sociology, and cultural criticism. Dyson has authored numerous books on race, politics, and culture, and has held faculty positions at various universities. more

You May Also Like

“Blackness is an ocean, a universe, a possibility that can never be exhausted. And so we have to constantly reaffirm the necessity of excavation, of archiving and curating, but also exploring, and understanding afresh and learning for the first time what it is that we need to know, and what the limits and boundaries are, and what the themes and preoccupations should be, and what the redemptive character of that erudition is. I find myself in the exciting position of doing all that, and at the same time having the obligation to explain to white people what the deal is.”

PeopleKnowsNeedsShouldFirstsCharacterUniverseUnderstandingWhiteDealsPossibilityPositionLimitsOceanFirst TimeExcitingBoundariesObligationThemeExploringExhaustedBlacknessPreoccupationErudition
Author:Michael Eric Dyson
Create image

“Whiteness itself is artifice, is fiction, is a construction, is narrative, is myth. And I seek to deconstruct all of that, to challenge the accretion, the intellectual accretion, the philosophical secretion that generates within the edifice of white supremacy that allows people easy escape, and egress. And I'm saying, "No, you can't leave now. You cannot afford to not know what I'm talking about, because you gotta be held accountable."”

PeopleKnowsEasyChallengesWhiteFictionTalkingIntellectualPhilosophicalMythNarrativeConstructionWhite SupremacySaying NoSupremacyWhitenessArtificeEdifice
Author:Michael Eric Dyson
Create image

“I have argued tirelessly, nearly endlessly, in so many books, about the need for the social, the economic reconstruction of society. The demand that people be present themselves, that they contribute to the reorganization of society, that they own up to their own complicity in a system from which they derive benefit and advantage, often without acknowledgement, and the discomfort, the uncomfortable way in which that must be acknowledged.”

PeopleWayNeedsBookSocialEconomicDemandBenefitsAdvantageUncomfortableDiscomfortReconstructionAcknowledgementComplicityReorganization
Author:Michael Eric Dyson
Create image