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
I don't think you can bury words. I think the more you try to dismiss them, the more power you give to them, the more circulation they have. Michael Eric Dyson
Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes. Michael Eric Dyson
Class certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy; blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites. 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
Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn't political and racist in refusing to worship with us. 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
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
My church is the world! I want to bring the gospel to as broad and as interesting an audience as possible. 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
I didn't get to college until my 20s, because I was a young father on welfare and had to take all kind of jobs to support my young son. There's what frames my view on the topics I discuss on my shows, and the average person relates to that. No matter how many degrees I have now, I lived that life, and that comes through to the people watching. Michael Eric Dyson
My ambition didn't grow out of nowhere. It was planted in me by a community that nurtured me. Michael Eric Dyson
Comedy is to force us to observe ourselves in ways that are humorous and yet, at the end of the day, that cause us enough discomfort with the status quo to make a change. Michael Eric Dyson
It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity. Ariel Durant
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. Ariel Durant
The truth of the matter is that I live on an isolated cattle ranch in the middle of Oklahoma and that's not going to change. Ree Drummond
Knowing what I'll write about and what I won't has never really been a problem. I won't write about things that bore me. Ree Drummond