What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America

by Michael Eric Dyson

There’s an expression in many African countries when you meet somebody for the first time. The greeting is not ‘Pleased to meet you.’ The greeting is ‘I see you.’ And I see you in all of the dimensions of who you are. I see you in full relief. I see you based on the complexity of your life, like everyone else’s life. And I think that part of it is that we, in lifting up the community, have to require that everyone understands the complexity, or sees the community in full relief. And understanding then that if you’re talking with a black woman, you should understand it’s a black woman’s issue. The economy is a black woman’s issue. Education is a black woman’s issue. Health-care reform is a black woman’s issue. Combating climate change is a black woman’s issue. Black Lives Matter is a black woman’s issue. People talk now about intersectionality. That relates to the various forms that one identifies with, or identifies themselves as being. But I would say that, as leaders, we have to understand that no one constituency is a monolith.”