FRIDAY

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

RELATED LINKS

• Dr. Dyson's official site
• Excerpt from Debating Race
• Q & A with Dr. Dyson

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Michael Eric Dyson is a distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania and the host of his own syndicated radio program. He is the author of a number of notable books, including one last year on Hurricane Katrina. His latest book is called "Debating Race,” a collection of memorable encounters and conversations about matters of race in America. Michael Eric Dyson, it's always nice to see you, sir.

Michael Eric Dyson: Always good to see you, man.

Tavis: I don't know you do it. Fourteen books in fourteen years. You're cranking out a book every year.

Dyson: Well, you know, I'm just trying to stay on my game and trying to take the requisite time it takes to construct a book, as you know, having sold so many, to put the requisite effort into it to make sure that it's clean and articulate and to make sure that it's certainly representative (laughter) -

Tavis: - (Laughter) That sounded sort of Biden-esque, clean and articulate.

Dyson: And who knew that, when we talk about the influence of hip-hop culture on the culture, that Joe Biden, the senator, would have been influenced by "you're so fresh and so clean?”

Tavis: (Laughter) Now there you go. I'm glad you went there because, two nights ago on this program, Chris Rock, comedian extraordinaire -

Dyson: - yes.

Tavis: - was on this program a couple of nights ago and your name just happened to come up.

Dyson: I see.

Tavis: Would you like to see this clip?

Dyson: Yeah, with him and the woman I owe child support to (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) Roll the Chris Rock clip from two nights ago on this program.

[Film Clip]

Tavis: So what do you think of that, Mike Dyson?

Dyson: Well, you know, how you're living, Biggie Smalls, in mansions and Benz and giving inns to my friends and it feels stupendous, tremendous dream. Blink a dollar and a dream. Well, you know what? Chris can rock it. I'm just trying to Michael Dysonize my thing, brother, you know (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) On a serious note, though, do you ever get concerned that your profound intellect gets taken less seriously because of your style, because of your flow, because of the way you choose to do what you do?

Dyson: Of course, but that's the dilemma of Black culture at large.

Tavis: Right.

Dyson: The point is that, if you have style and substance merged together in a seamless package, people always question the integrity of the fusion. So what we have to do is think ahead of time. We have to think anticipatorily. We have to look toward the future like Jesus did. "One day hopefully I'm going to rise. Got to go through some death right now. It's going to be kind of funky and fowl and nefarious, but ultimately the triumph will be mine."

So you have to have enough confidence in your skills and abilities that God gave you that the world might catch up twenty years later. You know what? In the midst of all that stuff, he was dropping some signs. I don't have time to let people check it out now. The people who get it, they get it. I think I speak clearly and hopefully lucidly enough that they get that.

But people in the academy are always suspicious of people who are able to speak beyond jargon, beyond obscure discourse and dialog and language, to say something meaningful in five minutes that somebody out there in the world can actually understand. I don't apologize for that. I got a PhD from Princeton not to please other critics, but to speak the truth to power in as lucid a fashion as possible.

Tavis: Let's do that now then. This book on race, "Debating Race,” you refer to race in this book as America's great problem. Let me ask whether or not it really is just, with respect, America's great trouble or whether or not it is the most intractable issue in America?

Dyson: Well, that Smileyism always works for me and I think it's very important to say that it is what you just said. It's a great problem. It's the most intractable problem we have. Why? Because it won't go away. Why? Because we continue to try to pick at the scab and we don't want to deal with the wound that is beneath it.

America is ingenious at avoidance. It avoids the most central realities that constitute who we are as a nation and we've been doing this, Tavis, from the very beginning. I mean, the reality is, as you've often heard me talk about, we live, as been said, in the United States of Amnesia, which means that we are addicted to forgetfulness. We don't want to remember those things that bring embarrassment, shame or force us to confront ourselves as a nation.

So we'd rather go to the tsunami, twenty-four hours but thousands of miles away, than go down to New Orleans. And isn't this interesting? This is what America does when the cameras are rolling. What do they do when the world is not watching? So America is a genius at avoidance.

What I try to do in this book is to bring front and center the central claims of race in this culture. And its race and gender, race and class, race and sexual orientation. Race is a universe of meaning that encompasses a whole lot of different realities at the same time.

Tavis: What's the value, then, in forcing or coercing America to have this conversation? If they don't want to have it, what's the value in forcing them to have the conversation about race?

Dyson: Well, when Rosa Parks got up, they didn't want to give her a seat. When Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke, they didn't want to hear him. Now they celebrate him as the greatest American, at least I do, that ever lived. So initially, the move always is to resist the very thing that is important, that is incisive, that invites us into a conversation that may be difficult.

When your doctor delivers bad news to you, you ain't trying to hear it, but if you don't hear the news that your doctor delivers to you, you don't have a better chance to survive. You've got to listen to people who bring strong medicine so that the body politic can at least be helped or rehabilitated.

Tavis: Let me go at this conversation in a different way. One of the difficulties in trying to have a conversation when one is on book tour and being interviewed by everybody is that you want to give it a different treatment.

Dyson: Sure.

Tavis: Let me come at this from a different way, if I can. That is to say, to throw some things at you - maybe five things - five reasons that I get all the time about why race is no longer an issue in America. Five reasons that underscore that Dyson and Smiley are wrong and it is not the most intractable issue. In no particular order, Oprah Winfrey. You can't tell me race is an issue in America. Oprah is the media maven in America today.

Dyson: She's a wonderful woman. She is the exemplification of the profound investment of Black culture in creating her media genius. But she is an exception to and not an extension of a tradition. Oprah Winfrey reigns supreme precisely because she's able to transcend the perception of blackness to speak to those beyond her community.

But Oprah Winfrey's success says nothing about the millions of Black people who will never be able to not only not have a television show, but be able to live in a decent way. We can't even raise the minimum wage to seven dollars until two years from now where the masses of African American people who are poor live beneath the poverty level.

So Oprah Winfrey's success is tremendous. It does indicate an ability to overcome racial disparity, but it has not overcome that racial disparity.

Tavis: All right, that's media. Reason number two of why racism is no longer a real issue. Bob Johnson owns an NBA franchise. He owns a major professional team in this country. You tell me race is an issue? This brother owns a team.

Dyson: I'm glad he does, brother, but you know the masses of Black people playing in the NBA, three hundred fifty men and it's a bunch of Black guys and some, you know, white guys from Eastern European countries, I think the white men in America needs affirmative action to get back in the NBA. The Larry Byrd exception needs to be evoked (laughter) with Steve Nash as the exception.

So the reality, Tavis, is that Bob Johnson owning a team is great. It is a sign of racial progress. It is not a sign that racism doesn't persist. Michael Jordan couldn't get a team and he was promised one in Milwaukee, in Wisconsin. There are so many other African American people who can't even get into the higher echelons of management and we're still tamping down on even the style of dress of these African American players.

So until at least three-fourths of that league is owned by African American people or at least half of it, we won't be able to say that racism at that level has been overcome.

Tavis: In academia, not only is she the president of an ivy league school called Brown, she was on the short list, we're told, for becoming the president of Harvard. She did not get that, obviously, but Ruth Simmons is running an Ivy League institution and you're trying to tell me in America that race is still real?

Dyson: Oh, no doubt, and she's an extraordinary woman. I just lectured there at Brown and stayed with Ruth. She's a dear friend of mine. She's a genius in administration and in higher education. But again, Tavis, the masses of African American people in higher education can barely get in the door. The elite institutions in this nation, about twenty-five percent of the institutions at most, are the ones where we have these fierce battles about affirmative action.

Black people are still discouraged from inclusion in the larger circle of American educational opportunity and, furthermore, the masses of our people are in two-year institutions or colleges or historically Black colleges and universities. We still have not penetrated the upper ranks of the American elite and, as long as that good is being distributed according to pigment, it ain't our pigment that's being included.

Tavis: Exhibit C. You had not one this year, but two brothers coaching in the biggest game in all of sports and you're still trying to tell me that race is an issue in America.

Dyson: Well, it isn't interesting that Lovey Smith could hardly notice that it was. Mr. Dungy certainly did, being the son of a professor in Jackson, Michigan. I got to shout Michigan out for the love that we have for Mr. Dungy. Again, it's incredible. It's incredible that two coaches coached it. But if wasn't a big deal, why did we make it a big deal? Then when we made it a big deal, people said, "Oh, it's no big deal."

I saw white commentators. "Oh, it's not a big deal at all. It's really, really unremarkable that two Negroes could actually coach the NFL." Well, brother, if it ain't a big deal, how come we're sitting around talking, "How come they're the first?" If it ain't no big deal, how come, after all these years, Black people been doing their thing in the NFL, we've never had two coaches there? So again, they are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Tavis: All right, my final entreaty to you (laughter) that maybe race isn't the most intractable issue in America.

Dyson: Right.

Tavis: Our Secretary of State is a Black woman. I mean, the whole world sees Condoleezza Rice, you know, as the spokesperson for America on foreign policies and you're trying to tell me that race is an issue.

Dyson: Where's Chris Rock when I need him (laughter). Look, man, I'm going to drop some signs on you right here (laughter). Well, it was a woman named Zora Hurston who said, "All my skinfolk ain't my kinfolk."

The reality is, Tavis, that Condoleezza Rice is an extraordinary woman. She has a PhD in Russian from the University of Denver. She represents the highest echelon of American academic achievement, but she does not represent the base interests of African American people or the broad variety of interests that we have.

I think Condoleezza Rice is to be applauded for her achievements. I think that what she represents is reprehensible in the sense that she's connected to a government and an administration that has done horrible things in the name of defending democracy and squelching dissent.

So for me, if she's putting a Black face on repressive politics, that is the kind of progress that we need to question. You see, racial progress is not predicated upon how many Blacks get in. It's the quality of blackness that informs the perception of a particular policy or practice.

I think, at this level, Condoleezza Rice does not represent that kind of racial progress to me despite the fact that she's a Black woman and going to be a Black woman until she dies. I'm a Black man until I die, but ultimately, that does not represent the best interests of our people historically, and she's from Birmingham, Alabama, what they used to, as you know, call "Bombingham.”

Well, then, make a difference in terms of the advice you give to the president to reflect some of the incredible distinctiveness of that traditional city in terms of civil rights. Martin Luther King, Jr. went to jail there. Have enough sense to close the gulf between what George Bush represents and what you came from.

So I think in that sense, Tavis, that ain't no indication that we've made progress. In fact, we're worse off around the world because now people who used to give us a break around the world are saying, "Oh, that's not the Black person." You got a Black face on the tyranny; they think we're down with it. That's even worse for us around the world. She's set us up worse than a rap video.

Tavis: Wow. That's a major comparison right there (laughter). Let me offer this then seriously as an exit then. I haven't done justice to what you have in this wonderful polemic here on race, but I've tried to come at it from a different perspective to address those concerns that we hear all the time about why race isn't an issue in America.

That said, here's the exit question. In the most multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic America ever, give me a reason to believe. Give me a reason to be hopeful that we can get some traction and make some progress on this race question.

Dyson: Well, people like yourself, people who are taking the issue of race seriously and talking about it daily. I used to have a daily talk radio show. I'm no longer with that show. I've moved on to other opportunities and hopefully vaster reaches that allow my voice to be amplified.

But the realities, Tavis, those of us who are on the front line leading and thinking and talking in a very critical fashion along with young people, another generation, that through hip-hop, through popular culture, begins to lose some of the negative perceptions of African American people and open up. When we have this broad conversation where we're allowed to come together.

Joe Lewis was a great spokesman for African American interests even though he wasn't in the pulpit. Why? The entertainment value and the sports value provided him an ambassadorship of Black people to the world. White folk could hear what this brother was saying because they didn't think he was threatening. People who are on the front line now, along with young people in this generation, create another opportunity for us to overcome the differences we have and to think critically about the issues at the same time.

So I believe that young people have a sense of hopefulness about the future. And I'm hopeful, Tavis, because I believe from the people I come from that, as Howard Thurman said, "Never reduce your scale of sight to the level of the event which is your immediate experience." Don't let the dream you have fester on the vine of cynicism. Always anticipate the future.

The greatest word in Black America is "next.” You know, we had the rhythm and blues. What's next? We had hip-hop. What's next? We had blues. What's next? Next is the greatest key word of Black creativity. That's why I'm hopeful. Not because I look out there and see that America's done anything profound. It's because I believe that the people who make up this nation have the will to change it at their best.

Tavis: He is one of America's leading public intellectuals, in part because his intellect is so usable. His new book is "Debating Race with Michael Eric Dyson.” Mike Dyson, it's always an honor to have you on the program.

Dyson: Always good to be here, brother.

Tavis: Good to see you, man. Up next, acclaimed debut novelist Dinaw Mengestu. Stay with us.