TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of humanities at the University Of Pennsylvania, and author of a number of notable books on African American and American culture. His most recent text aimed at issues surrounding Hurricane Katrina. The book is called "Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster." He joins us tonight from the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection, Philadelphia. Professor Dyson, nice to have you on, sir.

Michael Eric Dyson: Brother Smiley, always a blessing to be here.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. Let me start with the funeral services yesterday for Coretta Scott King. As I intimated earlier, race and class came up yesterday, and one really shouldn't be surprised that they in fact did come up. You were at the funeral yesterday, so you were there. You were there when former President Jimmy Carter had these words to say:

The struggle for equality is not over. We have only to recall the color of the faces in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, those most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans. Close quote. President Carter uttered those words, and the place erupted in applause and a standing ovation with President Bush, no less, sitting on the stage. Take me back to that moment, since you were there.

Dyson: Oh, it was riveting. Earlier, of course, Reverend Joseph Lowery had already roused the element, so to speak, by, I Mr. Bush's face, in poem form nonetheless, suggesting that weapons of mass destruction were not found. So that already had incited the crowd and instigated them to even greater fury in a positive sense when Mr. Carter stepped to the podium and talked about the color of the faces there.

It was extraordinary, because after all, this is Coretta Scott King. The woman who partnered with Martin Luther King Jr. to oppose not only White supremacy, social injustice in broad stroke, but economic inequality in particular, and the class warfare that we see going on in our nation today. So, the poor and the vulnerable and the dispossessed are those for those whom she spoke.

And those to whom she spoke, and regularly represented. So when Mr. Carter spoke about his fellow Atlantan, his fellow Georgian, he did a brilliant and powerful thing at a funeral that was not only a representation of the life of Coretta Scott King, but the legacy of Coretta Scott King. And certainly, it extends at the heart of Katrina.

Tavis: Let me ask whether or not you think that a service like that, a moment like that, can penetrate the heart, the mind, and the soul of a president who might not have heretofore understood the plight of Black people. But against the backdrop of this towering figure, Coretta Scott King, perhaps he left there, even though he got dissed in the process, perhaps he left there with this conscience pricked.

Dyson: No doubt. And having his conscience pricked is something that would be significant. His father had already defended him, in part. It was one of the more humorous exchanges during the service, where President George H.W. Bush, the former President, the 41st, as they call him, stood up and defended his son by saying Lowery used to come to the White House, it was 23 Lowery, about 21 Lowery and three George Bush.

But he said, keep your day job. You're not going to displace Maya Angelou as a poet. So, he showed some pep in his step and some zing in his sting, so to speak. But I think, Tavis, that perhaps it was the occasion, rousing in its element, somber, not somber in the negative sense, but the dignity and grace that Mrs. Coretta Scott King deployed and employed during her life certainly was manifest there.

And I think and hope by the rousing response and the applause of the audience that Mr. Bush, the present President, certainly felt the fact that these African-American people whose backs were against the wall, who identified with their poor brothers and sisters, are the ones he now has to listen to.

Not simply $120 billion more for the war, but thinking about more resources that FEMA could direct toward those vulnerable. So, my answer to that question is yes. We're going to give him the benefit of the doubt, until he proves that he is totally tone deaf and incapable of understanding the politics of compassion, we'll suggest that that was a moment of possible penetration of the husk of Mr. Bush's own understanding of what happened during Hurricane Katrina.

Tavis: Does that mean, then, that in the pages of  "Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster," one would not get the impression that Professor Dyson believes that just in the aftermath of Katrina that the President is already tone deaf?

Dyson: Well, there's no question about that. The reason we say we hope it can be a possible moment of transformation is that the present moment, and the past, certainly didn't indicate that Mr. Bush was broadly sensitive or deeply understanding of that condition of those poor people. In my book, I address the Kanye West famous, to some infamous, statement that George Bush doesn't care about Black people.

First of all, I use it to say he's not speaking about, and certainly I'm not speaking, about George Bush the individual. Not the person. Not the private person. But the public persona, the institutional identity of the face of the American government, and the representative of democracy of our culture. In that sense, we're speaking about George Bush, the President.

And care, Tavis, is not measured in terms of personal sentiments of compassion. They are measured by if you are willing in politics to deliver resources in a timely fashion to vulnerable communities who are under need and crisis. And in that sense, George Bush, the face of the government, did not care deliver resources in a timely fashion to vulnerable communities that were disadvantaged in a way that helped them.

So, yes, I believe that he has not been open, and certainly has been tone deaf. But hopefully, the funeral of Coretta Scott King presents an opportunity for him to think even more deeply and more richly about this situation.

Tavis: The other back drop, Michael, it seems to me, against which this conversation is held tonight is that yesterday, the money that FEMA had put up heretofore to keep people in hotel rooms, evacuees out of Hurricane Katrina, out of New Orleans specifically, that money ran out yesterday. So as of yesterday, officially, occupants in about 4,500, almost 5,000 hotel rooms emptied out yesterday because the FEMA commitment to put them up is now over and done. What say you about that reality?

Dyson: Well, FEMA has been a fickle, futile, feeble. They've been furious. If I could think of some more Fs that I could say on air, I'd probably say those, too.

Tavis: (laugh) Stop while you ahead with those F words.

Dyson: Yes, sir. (unintelligible) stop right there.

Tavis: (laugh) Yeah.

Dyson: So, the reality is that FEMA, Tavis, has been atrocious. One of the stories about FEMA, to be sure, is the ineptitude, the inexperience, and the ignorance that besieged them. The top heads of FEMA, not only Mr. Brown, who was the head of the International Arabian Horse Association for a while before coming to FEMA.

Not Joseph Alba or his predecessor, who came from the Bush campaign in 2000, had no experience at all in federal emergency management, and in terms of disaster mitigation. Other top leaders had little or no experience as well. This is why George Bush's dulcet phrase uttered at the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia come from behind to bite him in the hind parts.

That is, the soft bigotry of low expectations. What we saw in that, and continue to see in FEMA, is the manifestation of giving your homeboys, your cronies, a job just because you're paying them back politically. Furthermore, what we see is the manifestation of a political philosophy that says that limited government is the best.

We know the Bush administration is heir to Ronald Reagan's belief in the eighties that the government is the enemy of the people. So the irony is, and the paradox that is punishing, is that if you're at the helm of the government, but you believe the government should be limited and is of little use to the people because you've shredded the safety net, then you're a dangerous person to be there.

And I think this manifests itself with FEMA's inability to understand first of all these people have been made vulnerable by an act of nature extended by an unnatural disaster called poverty, race, and class. And the inability of the administration to understand they must gird up their loins and speak, Tavis, to the brilliant speech that Mr. Bush gave in the aftermath of Katrina, when he stood in New Orleans and talked about the structural inequalities and the persistent poverty that this nation must somehow resolve.

That was a beautiful, uplifting, edifying speech that has since fallen on deaf ears in the administration. And certainly, FEMA's failure to provide for those folk is a manifestation of the collapse, the tragic collapse, of the Bush administration's commitment to those people who were the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Tavis: You covered these issues in depth. I don't have time to go as in depth as I'd like. But let me put it this way. You talk about the government's response, or lack thereof, so you got a critical critique of government. You talk about the media and the word refugee and the picture of the Black folk in the water and White folk in the water.

And the Black folk were looting food and the White folk were finding food. So you talk about government, you talk about media, and the third area that really concerns me is the American people. If government doesn't get it, the media doesn't get it, that's one thing. But you expect the American people to get it. That Pugh Research Center poll that found that Black folk and White folk differed greatly on two central questions.

Black folk thought that the response, or lack thereof, pointed up another example of racial inequality in America. White folk didn't see it that way. Black folk said the response would have been faster had the victims been White. White folk didn't see it that way. So, what say you, then, about the fact that after all has been said and done, in many respects, more has been said than done with regard to us as Americans getting it.

Dyson: Oh, absolutely, Tavis. That's a brilliant point, because ironically and tragically enough, in the beginning of the twenty first century, we still occupy two parallel, though widely and vastly different universes of perception around race, as African-American people, generally speaking, and European-American White brothers and sisters, generally speaking.

The reality is, we looking at the same thing, but we ain't seeing the same picture. As the bible said, some heard thunder, some heard the voice of God. And depending upon where you're standing and where you are, you interpret the sounds differently. And African-American people who have been rendered vulnerable historically, exiled, forced into migrations that have instigated, of course, extraordinary developments in our culture.

But also mark the way in which we have been constantly a pilgrim people on the path toward expanding opportunity, but also forced there because of the inability of the government and the people of America and our citizens to understand our plight. That poll suggests that we still occupy two different world views, perspectives, outlooks.

What the Germans would call (speaksinGerman) . Let's throw everything we can at it. Two different perspectives generated out of the cultures that have produced us. And Tavis, this is why, when we talk about race in this country, it's not simply racial intent that is important. It's also racial consequence.

It was Senator Obama who said look, when he looked at Hurricane Katrina, he didn't see active malice. He saw passive indifference. I would simply add that those are flip sides of the same coin. Active malice is the cell phone with the ring volume at high. Passive indifference is the cell phone with the ring volume on vibrate. But guess what, Tavis?

At the end of the day, you're still getting a message transmitted or a message communicated. Whether it's ringing loudly, or whether it's on vibrate. That's what we're dealing in this country. The difference between racist intent and racial consequence.

Tavis: I'm about to lose this feed, and none of our message will be transmitted if I keep going. So that said, let me thank Michael Eric Dyson for the new book, "Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster." As always, Professor, nice to have you on. All the best to you.

Dyson: Mr. Smiley, it's always a blessing.

Tavis: Up next on this program, from the new Pink Panther film, actor Jean Reno. Stay with us.