quotes by Michael Eric Dyson

"Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth--even if they decide to help the less fortunate--while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible. "
— Michael Eric Dyson (Come Hell or High Water)

"..And the same rapper who revels in a woman's finely proportioned behind may also speak against racism and on behalf of the poor, even as he encourages them not to look at hip-hop as their salvation."
— Michael Eric Dyson (Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?)

"We should not be post-racial: seeking to get beyond the uplifting meanings and edifying registers of blackness. Rather, we should be post-racist: moving beyond cultural fascism and vicious narratives of racial privilege and superiority that tear at the fabric of "e pluribus unum.""
— Michael Eric Dyson (April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America)