Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

by Michael Eric Dyson

One thing you must understand, beloved, is that whiteness isn’t a solo act. It’s got a supporting cast. Lots of other things got created to uphold and justify whiteness. None was more seductive or necessary than the idea of American history. It may be hard for many of you to concede this. You think of history as a realm of complete objectivity. You think there are such things as indisputable facts, and those facts are woven together by neutral observers in a compelling story that is told as history. You think historians belong to a guild of chroniclers whose work is separate from what the culture considers important. You think they abide by the line from the sixties television series Dragnet, whose star character, the police sergeant Joe Friday, says famously, and dryly, “All we want are the facts, ma’am.” But the truth is that what so often passes for American history is really a record of white priorities or conquests set down as white achievement.