Ep. 83 – Entertaining Race: A Conversation with Michael Eric Dyson

[00:00:00] Peniel: Welcome to Race and Democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice, and citizenship.

[00:00:21] Peniel: All right. On today’s podcast, I’m pleased to join my friend, one of the GOATs out here, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, author of 26 books, distinguished university professor of African American and Diaspora studies, at Vanderbilt University, he’s one of the nation’s, really, one of the world’s premier public intellectuals, author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including Tears we Cannot Stop What Truth sounds like. Jay-Z and most recently longtime coming, a winner of the 2018 Non-Fiction Southern Book Award. Dr. Dyson is also a recipient of two NAACP image awards in the 2020 Langston Used Festival Medallion former president Barack Obama has. Everybody who speaks after Michael Erik Dyson Pales in comparison.

[00:01:09] . I love it. Dr. Dyson, thank you. Welcome to Race and Democracy.

[00:01:13] Michael Eric Dyson: Dr. Joseph. Always a pleasure to be here with such a great figure, thinker, and intellectual as you.

[00:01:19] I want to talk about. entertaining race. your most recent book or one of the most recent performing blackness in America? In the context of the real challenges and opportunities that we face right here, about three years.

[00:01:33] Peniel: into post George Floyd, post Breonna Taylor America. we’re here in Texas where there’s been these numerous assaults on d ei at the University of Texas. And, statewide bills that are homophobic and transphobic. now new talk about ending all new DEI in Texas. but also reviewing diversity equity initiatives, right? , and I’m Associate Dean of Justice Equity Diversity. Inclusion right here, Florida And DeSantis the Attack on Critical Race Theory. I really want our listeners to know that Dr. Dyson is one of the premier theorists and intellectuals and scholars of global black history ever.

[00:02:14] Peniel: And in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, ethics, religion, women’s studies and feminism, history, culture and arts. your knowledge and really the writing and the research you continue to do spans all those arenas. You’re really the person to talk about this in terms of.

[00:02:32] Peniel: How these attacks are connected to voting rights, how these attacks are connected to the afterlife of slavery and racism in Jim Crow, how these attacks are connected to mass incarceration, police violence and brutality, but also Jackson, Mississippi, and black folks drinking brown water and. New Mississippi Governors twirling the mustaches like they’re confederates from the 19th century in this period.

[00:03:00] Peniel: So I want us to talk and just wrap about this because your new book, entertaining Race, which looks at a series of different essays over the course of your career. And I could say I, the first thing I read by, Dr. Dyson was in 1993, a book called Reflecting Black. When I started graduate school.

[00:03:15] Peniel: Yes, sir. And. I think that was his first book. Yeah. And so I’ve read the first book all the way up until , the most recent book. So I’m a big admirer.

[00:03:23] Michael Eric Dyson: Oh man. Sorry for that Punishing residue. but look, then read Third Reconstruction by Peniel Joseph. That’s how we can explain all this, because in that brilliant book, you lay it out.

[00:03:34] Michael Eric Dyson: This is where we are, where you talk, what you talk about in that book, post Obama and so on and so forth. But the George Floyd incident, think about it. America was weeping and crying and gnashing at teeth, as the biblical metaphor talks about it between the struggle between DESE and Lazarus, the rich guy, inhale and the poor guy in heaven.

[00:03:56] Michael Eric Dyson: And so we’ve got this, , this extraordinary confession, this confessional moment in American political history, where on the nightly news, you hear broadcasters talking about systemic racism. Huh? what? Wait a minute, what , like they were talking about it like it was drinking water, like systemic racism is not, it became part of the parlance, part of the culture, part of the vocabulary, and it was extraordinary in many ways.

[00:04:23] Michael Eric Dyson: you had the blacking out on Instagram, you had people committing massive amounts of money. to try to make things different. And then predictably, as you write in many of your brilliant books, but especially in your latest, the backlash is predictable. and the rapidity of the backlash is all the more astonishing, in our own era because of the depth of the confess.

[00:04:49] Michael Eric Dyson: That many Americans made on the corporate level, on the academic level, on the political level, we’re just gonna do better. We haven’t done enough. We hired new people here. We brought in new people here. You talk about d ei and the extra, alphabet that’s been added onto it, of course, as well. So the thing Is that we went from that so quickly to the backlash of the Ron DeSantis, the Governor Abbots of Texas, Arkansas.

[00:05:17] Michael Eric Dyson: Now, under the 40 year old. new governor, there, Huckabee. And so the point is that the backlash has been predictable and it’s been pervasive. we don’t believe that this is right. Or true. a student at Georgetown University where I used to teach, was looking through all this anti-racist literature, looking for the gold mine, looking for the nugget.

[00:05:42] that would shine in all this stuff. Oh, there it is. People keep mentioning critical race theory. What the heck is that? He didn’t know. And then he researched it and he says, aha, evil genius. because he figured out that if we could get a rallying cry on the right, we could rebut all the stuff going on after post George Floyd, cuz that’s too much for us to take.

[00:06:05] Michael Eric Dyson: We’re being indicted as racists. We’re talking about white privilege. We’re speaking about economic inequality, we’re talking about police brutality, masses, and millions of. Kids and young people and older people involved in the streets, black Lives Matter protests in some cities where there are four black people and yet they were massive cuz white folk were getting involved and for the first time.

[00:06:28] Michael Eric Dyson: the masses of white people are involved. It was extraordinary. I think it scared the heck out of, so many of the, conservative establishment because wait a minute, these are white kids out here. These are young white people out here, and these are white people saying we’ve had enough. And maybe because of the pandemic, People were at home, they could hear more.

[00:06:46] , they could look at their televisions more. They could look at their screens more. They saw George Floyd’s beating come across at a time when we’re already vulnerable. We are already getting the message that in the pandemic, black people are more likely to suffer than white people.

[00:07:00] . So that message is already out there. And then we see this happen and look, I think for many white. that moment in Obama’s rise when we said, no more excuses for black people. Black people can do anything, which was a bunch of balderdash to begin with, but a lot of white people were saying, no more excuses because this guy wasn’t running from the police.

[00:07:19] and all the arguments that he was doing, horrible things that he was, all the things they say about black people, he, I was scared. He was jumping on me. He was intimidating. He was using, harsh language. None of that is true. , he was nice. He was kind, he was begging for his mother.

[00:07:33] Michael Eric Dyson: And I think it got to why people were done soon as they hit the streets, as soon as their kids are out there, the backlash began. We gotta figure out a way to resist implicating all of us in a massive indictment of white supremacy, of systemic racism and predict. This stuff has been fast and furious and the backlash lasting longer than the promise of change in America.

[00:07:59] Peniel: I wanna really connect this with, this is a book about performing blackness in America, but so much of the backlash is anti-black. And you’ve written so eloquently about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. About Malcolm X. about Bobby Kennedy. why I love black women. about Tupac. Shakur. Naz, Jay.

[00:08:16] Steph Curry, Kobe, just so many different figures. So much of this is tied to anti-blackness, but anti-blackness that then injures queer people and Jews. and disabled and poor whites. So let’s talk about that in the sense that yes, so much of this anti-blackness, when we think about the anti critical race theory is.

[00:08:35] Peniel: Pointed against black women and men theorists, especially during this third reconstruction. I would argue people like Nicole, Hannah Jones, Kimberly Crenshaw, many people who you know very well, are part of that tradition, including a social gospel. Religious tradition that you are a part of.

[00:08:51] as well? Yes. with so many different black women and men who are, anointed, who are bishops, who are reverends, who are pastors, right? , I want us to talk about that. Like how is it during this reconstruction period that the redemption is. Those who are believers in the lost cause, how are they weaponizing, anti-blackness, even amid the juxtapositions that we’re talking about.

[00:09:13] Peniel: Because 2020 was a high point of reconstruction. We’ve never seen that many white people in the streets ever on behalf of black citizenship. That’s right. And dignity. So that’s a huge, major breakthrough. and what this backlash signal. Is a resistance to having that group of people who were outraged by the anti-blackness take control of the levers of political and policy and legal and legislative, but also cultural and

[00:09:38] Michael Eric Dyson: moral power.

[00:09:39] Michael Eric Dyson: Yeah, that’s a great point. No, you brilliantly said it. I ain’t even got to say nothing. There it is. Because in the brilliant point you made there that people often. is that it’s affecting Jews, it’s affecting queer folk. It’s affecting all these folk because there’s blackness in all of them too. Because the imprint of black struggle has enabled Jewish brothers and sisters.

[00:10:00] Michael Eric Dyson: Now it’s usually the story is, which is true of course, that in the sixties Jews were involved in the struggle for self-determination black people. That’s absolutely. But black people gave Jewish theology legs, black people gave Jewish ethics voice, black people gave Jewish morality an amplified platform.

[00:10:20] Michael Eric Dyson: So all this stuff, Moses, going through the struggle, the waters going through, the river and the splitting, the dance sea and all that, that we gave that colorful articulation in ways. Nothing within Jewish culture had been able to do to that degree and to that level. So it’s a give and take and a back and forth.

[00:10:41] Michael Eric Dyson: So there’s blackness in that Jewishness and Jewishness in that blackness and queerness from the very beginning. , what’s more queer than to come to America and have your testicles observed? We were queered on the auction block. black queerness is not necessarily exclusively a sexual identity. It’s a sexualized perception of who black people are.

[00:11:04] Michael Eric Dyson: But that ain’t normal to stand on an auction block and to have yourself examined as to the exact fit you are for the telos of agrarian capital. So we were queered from the very beginning. Why are we mad at queer people? two queer women in a. Black woman discovered Black Lives Matter. Oh my God.

[00:11:24] Michael Eric Dyson: People getting bit outta their shape. The first people to whom Black Lives matters must be proved is black people ourselves. , and the open discussion of how we must include everybody in every group, in every age cohort. This is why when we see Gabrielle Union and Dwayne Wade stand up and defend their daughter, Zaya.

[00:11:43] born as a young man choosing to become a woman. and changing her gender and with the full support. Yeah, the rigorous, raucous, belligerent support in beautiful ways of her mother, stepmother and father. So that’s what it means to be black. So not only are we undergoing. a resistance of the redemption is who want to reconstruct America according to their racist viewpoints.

[00:12:10] Michael Eric Dyson: We are reconstructing black identity at the same time. We are in the crucible of race, pulverizing, narrow conceptions of blackness and bringing to bear something different, something more powerful, something that challenges us as well. We have to. More uncomfortable as well in our own bodies to accommodate bodies that have been made uncomfortable by us, our queer bodies in our communities.

[00:12:36] Michael Eric Dyson: I’m a Baptist preacher. I was at a church once, not long ago, maybe three, four years ago, and a black woman came up to me after the service and she says, you’re going to hell. I said, ma’am, I, my sense of humor. I said, look,I said, did you talk to Jesus this morning? Cuz I spoke to him and he ain’t mentioned nothing about no flames.

[00:12:53] Michael Eric Dyson: I said, not even Burger King’s big whopper. I said, I ain’t heard nothing about no flames. Don’t be funny. You know what I’m talking about. She’s, I said, look, there are 25 reasons I know I should go to hell. I’m just curious about which reason, and I tried to be funny where I said my phone is locked.

[00:13:08] Michael Eric Dyson: That’s 15 of ’em right there. But she didn’t follow for, she was banned. And she says, you preach from the pulpit. That God created gay people. I said, ma’am, and you think I’m going to hell? I said, you clearly a polytheist. You believe that there’s a God for straight people and one for gay. I said, what did God take a break on Wednesday?

[00:13:25] this creation of people is hard. So I let the second shift, God, come on. And the second shift, God created gay people. I said, that’s what they were telling you about you and Mo and Noah, and the black people are cursed by him. Yeah. because of looking upon Noah as he was naked and all of.

[00:13:40] Michael Eric Dyson: Patriarchal misogynistic madness. I said, ma’am, either God created everybody or God in created nobody. Absolutely. And so it’s a challenge from within, even as we take on that challenge from without, but it attaches to gay people, lesbian people, Asian brothers and sisters. The hatred is horrible and horrendous.

[00:14:00] Michael Eric Dyson: And so what this has done is opened up a can of worms of being anti-everything black, which is anti-Asian, which is anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, and so on. But at the same time, it opens up possibilities of lines of coalition. Things that you’ve brilliantly written about how we have a multiracial multicultural democracy have great late manning.

[00:14:20] Michael Eric Dyson: Maribel wrote about that multicultural democracy. So that’s what we’re getting to because black history, as I was at the White House the other day, and Kamala Harris said, and she must have been reading, Peniel Joseph, she said, black history is American history. And as a result of that, . She said, we got to pass the baton.

[00:14:39] Michael Eric Dyson: It’s a relay race. Yeah. In that sense. And this third reconstruction that you’ve brilliantly written about, sees the paradox on the one hand, the, even the elevation of black female voices. It’s not like these are new, but it’s the fact that they were celebrated. And amplified in the way they hadn’t been before.

[00:14:55] Michael Eric Dyson: There was Septa Mcclar, at, Ella Baker, Joanne Robinson. there were so many black women who were doing the work, but who weren’t given voice until we read books like B by You or Brother Payne. But now, We have women who are there, evident, visible. Kimberly Crenshaw, Nicole Hannah Jones, she Eiffel.

[00:15:14] on and on. And yet there’s been a devastating demand for their devoicing. the de ation, undercutting them, undermine them, throw ’em away, and the beautiful thing. Is that we have the opportunity in this moment to say we will not stand for that kind of erasure, that kind of closure and that kind of, muffling of our voices.

[00:15:35] Michael Eric Dyson: And I think it’s extremely important to talk about that in concert with the other groups that have been attacked because anti-black in the same way that American history is black history is American history. anti-blackness is really anti Americanness. You’re fundamentally undermining the credo of American society.

[00:15:52] , you’re undermining e pluribus unum out of many one. So the real combatants against the traditions of democracy are not black and brown. And, Jewish people, they are the determined white nationalists who refuse to see anybody as legitimately American except their own. ,

[00:16:10] Peniel: I wanna dig down into, black men and women because, there’s a recent picture of Michael B.

[00:16:15] Peniel: Jordan and Jonathan Majors that, they’re both in Creed. They’re both these beautiful black men. straight cisgender. and they, it’s a very touching picture, Yeah. they’re embracing. and there’s, there’s that picture and there’s also the picture of, ASOP, raki and Rihanna.

[00:16:29] where Rihanna just is right out in front on the cover of Vogue and Asop has their new baby, their son and Rihanna’s pregnant with their second child together. And obviously Rihanna is worth 1.7 billion. Yes, sir. and then there were so many folks both trolling both of those pictures in terms of saying that, the Jonathan Major.

[00:16:47] Michael B. Jordan pictures was too queer. like this is the and Jonathan Majors also was in Ebony with Flo flowery robe and very comfortable in his masculinity. The brother is like in superb shape and And he’s proudly straight, but, , but really pushing back against what a proudly straight black man right.

[00:17:04] Peniel: Can present himself as. but they’re also trolling ASAP Rocky too. I want to talk about black men and masculinity and then I have another question for you about black women in our relationship with black women. But what do you think about that? And I, I thought about you a lot in the context of this.

[00:17:19] Peniel: You were one of the first people that I read in a big way, and this is the 1995 book, about Malcolm X, the myth and making of Malcolm X, which was something I could tell our listeners that every black graduate student in America read Bless, in 1995. And that was one of the key books about Malcolm.

[00:17:37] , but it was also about maleness and masculinity. Yeah. And you pushing us to think about, Heterosexuality about queerness. about what it means to be a man in a much wider and expansive context. So you’re way ahead of your time in that sense. So this is something that people who are BLM activists should read.

[00:17:54] Peniel: Everybody should read. Bless you, sir. what do you, think about, and you’ve done the same, I may not get there with you, with King . You’ve done the same holler if you hear me with Tupac. You’ve done the same. There’s a brilliant, one of my favorite books of yours. Your book on Marvin Gay.

[00:18:07] Marvin Gay is one of my favorite artists ever. Yeah, I think Marvin Gay might be the , like really? In my top three, if I’m on an island, I need Marvin Gay.

[00:18:15] Michael Eric Dyson: yeah. No doubt. No. You know what I’m saying?

[00:18:17] Peniel: No doubt. No doubt. So tell us about that in terms of where we’re at in 2023, because you’d mentioned Dwayne Wade’s daughter.

[00:18:24] Peniel: We’re making progress with a black man like Dwayne Wade proudly saying, this is my daughter. That’s right. That’s right. But then at the same time, all these trolls.

[00:18:33] Michael Eric Dyson: Yeah. yeah, they’re horrible, man. That’s what, and look, social media is great in many ways, and it’s cancerous and evil in others.

[00:18:40] and I’ve been on a campaign against cancel culture, not the right wing. Ver I’m not talking about them. They just don’t wanna be held account for anything. I’m talking about what we saw going on in Memphis and we detested it. Five black men, three of whom were members of a national fraternity, murder.

[00:18:59] Michael Eric Dyson: mercilessly a vulnerable black man. Tyree Nichols. Tyree Nichols. But we do it every day. We get mad at that. , but we’re trolling each other. Somebody says something, we bring the digital lynch mob to bear. No evidence necessary. Allegation alone, I don’t know if y’all remember that, but Reid Pinnell, Joseph and other American historians, they did this stuff back in the 19 nineteens, twenties and thirties.

[00:19:25] Michael Eric Dyson: Black man accused of raping a white woman. No, we’re not gonna have a jury trial. We’re gonna judge you right here. This is what social media has done. It has given us in hand the digital rope, to lynch each other, to hate each other, to dis discard each other. Jay-Z is ugly. It looks like a Campbell.

[00:19:44] Michael Eric Dyson: The children of J Jay-Z and Beyonce are, horrendous amplifications of the worst instincts that we have. and look, the democratization of literacy is, I. , but at the same time, everybody who got a story to tell can’t tell it well, and can’t talk well and can’t write it well. Everybody wants to be an author.

[00:20:05] Michael Eric Dyson: They want to demonize the process by which one becomes an author. rigorous study alone by yourself, trying to engage in scholarly reflection upon issues or in community and in concerts, but it’s hard. But they want to acclaim the product, so they hate the process, but love the product. Everybody wants to be smart, like I’m in church.

[00:20:25] Michael Eric Dyson: Doctor now demonizing study, stigmatizing it, or, I remember when I was a young preacher, I’m gonna get to your point, I was a young preacher in Tennessee. I’m back there now, but that’s a long story. and somebody said, yeah, this doc, this bishop, this young man is, wanting to go to graduate school.

[00:20:41] Michael Eric Dyson: I think he’s got a full ride to go to Princeton University to get a PhD. And the bishop says back, yeah, can a PhD from Princeton get you into. He’s asked me directly, I figured he wanted a response. I said, no, Bishop, but it will allow me to write my own sermons. So they were Oh, I said, yeah. So the thing is that people want to sell.

[00:21:00] Michael Eric Dyson: They want the product, bishop, doctor, professor, that they don’t wanna do the hard work. I say all that to say that when you look at these trolls out here beating up on Jonathan Major, and I’m confused. On the one hand we say we want the luxury. Of settled black identity that doesn’t have to defend itself.

[00:21:19] , that doesn’t have to always be under scrutiny. That doesn’t have to always be the subject of white supremacist reaction or that we have to worry about what might happen that we want to luxuriate in an implicit blackness. A blackness taken for granted, a black cosmos in universe as the normative takeoff for our own being, for our existential projects and for our political and ideological projects.

[00:21:42] Michael Eric Dyson: here we are. We got two black men, beautiful black men, amazing black men, and not only the picture, but then I saw the video of them standing up on the, red carpet and playing with each other, like back and forth. Like she, the woman that the, which is an amazing moment because it was j Michael B.

[00:21:58] Michael Eric Dyson: Jordan, who says to the woman interviewing him, she says, you know, we go back to high school known. He said, yeah, you called me corn. He said, remember that? Oh no, that was just joking. He said, no. She says, oh, I didn’t say. He says, oh yeah, I heard it. So that was a very tough moment. Beautiful.

[00:22:17] Michael Eric Dyson: Because his point is that this is the kind of culture that stigmatizes demonizes and anos and disappoints people by saying, your corny, you’re this, you’re goofy, you’re that. And then later on a development happens. Cause you. Talk about people at 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Let’s talk about development and so on.

[00:22:36] Michael Eric Dyson: And we are harsh in our adolescent judgements, but we replicate those adolescent inclinations on a social media where we’re pouncing immediately, haven’t studied, haven’t reflected, haven’t engaged. We just, everybody has an opinion and that opinion is equally valuable. It ain’t true. So I say all that to say.

[00:22:52] Michael Eric Dyson: when we have the majors and the beautiful thing about majors and Jordan, they’re playing each other, loving each other. Cause when the woman says,he’s the most sexy man in the world. What do you think about that? She said, and Jonathan Majors go, he is. Look at him, say, it was beautiful, the support.

[00:23:05] Michael Eric Dyson: It wasn’t like, no, it’s me. It’s me. He said, no, absolutely. And John, and he and Jonathan are going back and forth and supporting and loving each other. That’s what we need. , authentic black love in public is an unavoidably political gesture. And then when you talk about, ASAP Rocket, oh, you should be ASAP Rocket.

[00:23:23] Michael Eric Dyson: You should be offended. You’re playing the backdrop to a woman who’s in control. Look, and as you already said, 1.6 billion bro, and it wasn’t off the music. It’s off the entrepreneurship it false. It’s off the Fenty and the Sephora and the Savage and so on. She even turned I’m a savage into Fenty Savage.

[00:23:41] Michael Eric Dyson: So she’s able to brand her own peculiar idiomatic expression into a pop culture phenomena that reaps the whirlwind of more than a billion dollars respect this woman’s genius. The point is, that’s black female genius at an extraordinary. that hasn’t been acknowledged. He acknowledges it. He partners with her, they produce a child, and it, and it’s created some tension.

[00:24:06] let me think about guns that I’m carrying through the airport. What do I have to give up some of the tropes and some of the accuc mos of a kind of street authenticity in order to go to a higher level? JC said, Jay-Z said, I don’t, it don’t make no sense to me to be in the projects hallway to say I’m in the projects all day.

[00:24:24] Michael Eric Dyson: It makes no sense. Get your suit on. Come with me to the White House. Ah, this is the evolution of black consciousness. This is the evolution of black masculinity. Go from the streets selling crack to cracking the edifice at the White House with Barack Obama. That’s the move. . And , the beautiful thing there is that asap Rocky doesn’t have to be offended.

[00:24:47] Michael Eric Dyson: Yeah, by sitting on Vogue. Vogue is, celebrating black wo, in this case a black woman and celebrating women. You should be glad just to be a little smart part. posted stamp size on that cover. And the beautiful thing is they’re a family. She is the leader. She is the woman who gives,expression to the aspirations and fantasies, hopes and desperation for beauty, for content, for consciousness, and still manages to do her thing.

[00:25:13] Michael Eric Dyson: So I think that’s extraordinarily important. Masculinity has to be vulnerable, and yet understanding its place, redefinitions of masculinity are extremely important. The old school beat him down. Poisonous toxic masculinity has hurt. As much as it has hurt women, it has hurt us in our inability to acknowledge the other man.

[00:25:34] Michael Eric Dyson: I ain’t gonna, I ain’t gonna send in to pen Joseph. Cause if I acknowledge his genius,then that takes away from me. it’s ludicrous. Yeah. The kind of zero sum. Yeah. Hankering, tinkering and thinking around acknowledgement of the other. So that social media that, trolling has been cancerous to the creative.

[00:25:55] Michael Eric Dyson: Inventive character of black community for so many of us, especially black men who love and need each other. But when I see displays like that, I said, forget the dire trolls. Celebrate what we’re doing as men. Mature enough to embrace

[00:26:09] Peniel: each other. No, that’s excellent. I want to, pivot to black women, especially in this context.

[00:26:14] we’ve seen the Stacey Abrams, Nicole Hannah Jones. Alicia Garza. Tamika Mallory. No. the whole thing. Rihanna, Beyonce, on some levels we’ve seen the biggest outpouring, visible appreciation for black women’s genius. politically, economically, culturally, in so many different ways.

[00:26:35] Peniel: And I wanna talk about some of the, both the positives of that, but then the tensions that has brought up. The tensions who didn’t remember people like ice. people like, killer Mike, right? There’s been critiques of women. There’s been at times even people being receptive to some of the Trump language because of the tension. And I want to ask you, What do you make of that tension? , what can we do to ease that tension and how can we come to terms with the fact that black men and black women’s needs, there are convergences, but there are also very specific needs. And both both acknowledging those needs without necessarily putting those needs in competition.

[00:27:16] Peniel: But we have to remember, we’re in a capitalist society, so there is competition. Yeah. No doubt. Not everyone’s gonna get the job. We don’t live in a social democracy. . So in certain ways there is competition, right? Literally, especially at this high level of academ and intellectual thought and thinking, consulting, preaching that you do globally.

[00:27:34] Peniel: There’s competition. Yeah. So I want to unwrap

[00:27:36] Michael Eric Dyson: that. Yeah. no. It’s,as usual, bring it to nuance there. Look. . Some of it is just hack need, it’s just the same old reactionary resistance to the other being, the feeling of being displaced. Now they know how white guys feel , damn, can we get a, can we get a foothold in here?

[00:27:56] Jesus, is it horrible? This is why Dilbert got Jack. This is why Brother Adams, Scott Adams looking on the outside. He’s damn. He said the poll said, is it okay to be white? And 57, 50 7% of black people said, yes, but what about the others? That’s why black people are a hate group.

[00:28:12] Michael Eric Dyson: First of all, you idiot, why would you risk the empire you’ve built financially much less commercially? And with your cartoons on a Rasmussen pole, and that’s a right wing pole to start with. And they didn’t ask the other question, is it okay to be black? And then what he didn’t see, , is that an another question was can black people be racist too?

[00:28:35] Michael Eric Dyson: And 76 presented black people said yes. Yeah. So now I disagree with that in terms of the technical terms, but yes, bigotry and hatred, of course. Course we can do all that. Yeah. Yeah. if you see racism as of. A tructure control and structural. Yeah. It’s hard. Of course not. No, but the fact is black people were down with you.

[00:28:51] Michael Eric Dyson: You missed the point in the old poll because of your prejudice, bruh. So yeah, that’s, now you know how the white guys feel, right? damn, we’re filling out here on the island alone, like with John the Baptist on the island of Patmos, and we need a revelation. so the thing is that some of that stuff is just old and it’s.

[00:29:08] Michael Eric Dyson: It’s just the same old stuff and we, it ain’t nothing new and we ain’t gotta figure it out. We ain’t gotta spend a lot of thought. It’s says that you mad, you know that the women are coming up and you thought it was your place, you had your time. You guys are doing great and can you share, it’s in the sand.

[00:29:22] Michael Eric Dyson: Lot of sandbox of life. Learn to share your toys. . And you think women, that you sound like white men. the women are getting automatic, elevations without necessarily showing substantial talent that they’re, look, you sound like the white folk now who are mad at black people getting a chance.

[00:29:37] Michael Eric Dyson: So I think it’s, horrible on the one hand. But let me say something else though. No movement worth his salt can afford to be exempt from. . Legitimate critique though, not that kind of outside of stuff. Yeah. Like we got, we would say, I would say honestly to me too movement, believe women is not the greatest credo.

[00:29:57] Michael Eric Dyson: I understand the point. Women have been, disbelieved, have been dismissed, have been fundamentally mistrusted, have been seen as the stigma barriers, the Jezebel. All of that horrible misogyny. But it can’t be fixed by saying believe women. Cuz here’s the. Do you believe all women, Al Sharpton in New York City believed Tijuana Braley?

[00:30:19] and it nearly cost him his career. It’s not that we shouldn’t investigate, it’s not that we shouldn’t hear what they said and trust them so that we can then come up with the evidence. Is this true or not? What about when women A says one thing and woman B says another? Should we trust Kaji Brown Jackson or Amy Coney Barnett?

[00:30:39] if we trust. . So already automatically it has to be filtered through categories with which these women are associated. Are they reactionary, conservative women who seek to undermine the trajectory of democracy? We can’t believe that. So what we understand the meaning of it, however, is. Trust women, hear women listen to the pains and sufferings that they have endured and be willing to respond to them in a serious fashion.

[00:31:08] Michael Eric Dyson: Cuz some of the greatest criticisms that have come from particular women’s expressions that have been trauma tr traumatic and problematic, have been women themselves. But that ain’t got nothing to do with your reactionary, patriarchal, misogynistic refusal to hear the legitimacy of women’s cries, complaints, and circumstances, and the degree to which we are complicit.

[00:31:32] Michael Eric Dyson: in the erosion of feminist and feminine power. . And as a result of that, we have got to, we have got to, we have got to take it seriously. for most men, reacting in a reactionary fashion is ridiculous for most men not hearing what women have to say. The reason Me Too came up is because the history of assault upon black women is atrocious.

[00:31:53] And when you look at the founder of Me Too out of Philadelphia. , what she meant by it is quite different than what it has become to be sure. But she was talking about the history of neglect, even in black communities to marry of black women. sister Burke is saying, this is wrong.

[00:32:08] Michael Eric Dyson: Evil and atrocious. And black men’s complicity in white supremacist logics of patriarchy has to be called out. . Absolutely. But I think that we’re living in an age of no forgiveness and no ability to say, Hey, you messed up. Let’s move on, and you messed up. Let’s give you a second chance. Not on atrocious stuff where we know you’re horrendous and you have a possibility of structurally changing the lives of millions.

[00:32:32] Michael Eric Dyson: Not that, but the ability to acknowledge that. So yes, men and women are in competition at a certain level because of a capitalist society. Is Jay-Z? Are Jay-Z and Beyonce in competition? they’re married. Beyonce just passed him in terms of,Grammy’s. Yeah. Yeah. She got the Grammy record, bruh.

[00:32:47] Michael Eric Dyson: So at the crib at night, you might drink outta your,za or whatever you’re drinking. Ace of Spades. Ace of Spades, right? I’m up Bring, or whatever that is. you might drink it outta your Grammy Cup. But she got more cups to drink about ’em now, and she’s the most, celebrated of all time.

[00:33:01] Michael Eric Dyson: But Beyonce is a perfect ble. Of black female identity in American society. As has been said, you’re both too much and not enough simultaneously. You’re too much. Oh my God, you won all the awards, but you’re not enough, so we can’t give you the major one. This is a George Jefferson moment when you’re trying to move up to the east side.

[00:33:20] no. Stay in the hood with Archie Bunker and all them over there. You cannot move up to the east side. Oh, you wanna get a dance, album? Yes. Yeah. Great. You wanna get the r and b. Oh, it’s popular. maybe some of the popping that much, but no, not the major song of year. Yeah. Record of year and album of the year.

[00:33:37] Michael Eric Dyson: No. Look at Bonnie Rate. I love Bonnie rate. Bonnie rate new like what the hell just happened? Cuz ain’t nobody heard that song. In order to be Song of the Year, somebody has had to have heard it, okay? In order for it to be successful, right? Even Lizzo, whom I love about damn time. Lizzo gave her flowers to Beyonce cause she knew Lord had mercy.

[00:34:01] it was a great song, but even the Pope was singing You not gonna Break my soul, okay? That everybody was singing that song. So the thing, even Jay-Z, though he is not unbiased, said they were playing the entire album in clubs. It’s never been done. So the thing is, as long as you don’t try to test the boundaries of true universalism, as long as you don’t try to open up a spigot from which flows extraordinary, streams of black genius that we will not be able to tap again, you must stay in your lane to mixed metaphors.

[00:34:33] Michael Eric Dyson: So that’s what it means to be a black woman. Your black genius is both exploited and underutilized. Yeah, underappreciated at the same time, including black. . And so we have to be held accountable. Some would think, given what I said about you can’t believe all women, that’s a logical contradiction. No, I’m saying even more.

[00:34:51] Michael Eric Dyson: Deal with the inequalities and inequities, the injustices that black women face. and do it in a way that respects them. Cause we know behind the scenes, and you and I would never say this in public, some of the tensions even among black. Who disagree, who hate on each other, that feminist over there, she’s not doing it.

[00:35:07] we’ve seen it. You’ve heard it. We know what it is. So let’s not pretend that’s not real either. So in, in my line of work, so to speak, as a cultural critic, I have to call those balls and pitches. I have to call the strikes and balls, and you have to be honest about it. So there’s a way in which we can create.

[00:35:24] Michael Eric Dyson: Space and reservoir for us to be able to articulate our ideas and to tell the truth about what we believe without believing that. The other is Satan. I don’t know about you and I know you get it because you’re famous. , but a lot of black people, they just say horrible things about you. They call you name.

[00:35:42] Michael Eric Dyson: They on Twitter, it’s calling y’all kind of names saying you a coon and all this, I feel Herschel Walker at that point, LA Coon, a COO is a great animal. that smart animal , I almost feel like Herschel Walker at that point. But the thing is, they call you all these names and beat down on you, and we try to understand it because if they ain’t got power, what they got is the power of the, of.

[00:36:01] Michael Eric Dyson: Pin, the digital pin. But this stuff is destructive at the end of the day, and we gotta find out a way to mend the gap between black men and black women. Yes, there’s competition and some of it’s healthy. A lot of it is destructive. Yeah. And we gotta figure out ways to bind us together because the beauty and power, I wrote a book when it wasn’t a thing before.

[00:36:21] Michael Eric Dyson: It was Black Girl Magic and Black Boy Joy. I wrote about and celebrated, these black women, and I continue to celebrate ’em now.

[00:36:29] Peniel: With the time we have left, I wanna switch to politics. And really, you just came from the White House, black History Month celebration. . And I’ve written about Biden Harris as a reconstructionist administration, yeah. and I could tick off the things they’ve tried to do, including student loans, which seems like Supreme Court won’t let them do. But certainly the pandemic relief, more black women, federal judges in American history. Oh. Put black and brown children below the poverty line with the child tax credit.

[00:36:54] Peniel: Wanted to extend it. Couldn’t the Infrastructure act, the chip act, the inflation reduction Act, which is really a climate change bill, right? They’ve done so many equi, more equity orders than anybody in the history of the executive office. so there, it’s definitely a reconstruction as presidency that could have gotten more if we had.

[00:37:13] Peniel: Senators from, Kirsten Sinema and the Senator out of West Mansion. West Virginia Mansion. Yeah. but I wanna ask you, What do you think they can do over the next couple of years before the 2024 election? Yeah. To push back against the anti C R T to push back against the assaults that are happening on D E I K through 12 education, right?

[00:37:39] Peniel: Voter suppression, and really the continued proliferation of racial terror and white supremacist organizations and hate groups online, the incel. So many different things are happening that President Biden discussed during the, during his inaugural speech, but has since really not discussed that much, although he had the.

[00:38:01] Peniel: Last year, the democracy speech, the end of demo, strong state of the union. State of Union was strong state of the union. And certainly, like I tell people, a reconstructionist administration, although I also point out because I’m a scholar, that Biden was a receptionist in the nineties. Of course, when we think about the crime bill, right?

[00:38:17] Peniel: Bill Clinton, everyone was a ionist in the nineties and a lot of Negroes were helping him out and they were helping him out, Mike, The whole nine, all

[00:38:25] the,

[00:38:25] Michael Eric Dyson: and black pastors, the black people in the street, black pastors get these people off the

[00:38:28] Peniel: street, man, ’em off the street. Come on. So where do we go from here?

[00:38:32] Peniel: And I’m now thinking about Dr. King, chaos or community. Community, right? Where do we go from here? And what makes you feel, optimistic. And what makes you feel pessimistic?

[00:38:39] Michael Eric Dyson: No, I wanna say this if it’s not obvious already when you listening to this man, there is nobody, and nobody.

[00:38:47] Michael Eric Dyson: Who gives you living at the moment analysis of what’s going on better than Pinal Joseph, when you write those CNN pieces, I’m not joking either. they are so crucial because now we’ve got a great historical mind weighing in on critical issues. the talent you just gave, the Biden folk. I don’t know, have you ever met Biden?

[00:39:11] Michael Eric Dyson: Have you ever sat down? Oh, that’s gonna change. The thing is that your defense of him and it’s principle defense, it’s not personal, it’s principle defense. You may even never met him. Principle, defense of Biden is extraordinary and laying it out in such a powerful fashion, there’s nobody better than Professor Peril Joseph, to do that.

[00:39:33] Michael Eric Dyson: I learned so much from him. I take so much insight from him. I read everything he writes. I retweet it as much as I can, and put it on social media. to counterbalance all this ignorance that’s going on out there, because what you’re saying is true and, Biden doesn’t get his due. Biden is more progressive than Obama.

[00:39:50] Michael Eric Dyson: I’m sorry, y’all. He’s put more, he put a black woman in the White House and one on the Supreme Court. Dude, if he did nothing else, like for the rest of his time, he’s already. Everybody who came before him and he’s doing more, and I was at the White House the other day. He says, I might be a white boy, but I ain’t stupid.

[00:40:11] Michael Eric Dyson: Come on man. who’s talking like this dude is giving you the discourse too. And now, of course, predictably Blaze Media in the right wing. The fore Paul of Joe Biden. I was there. Yeah, I don’t wanna hear nothing. Go on and keep giving. Tucker Carlson,McCarthy, all of the transcripts, the unpublished transcripts of what happened on January 6th.

[00:40:32] Michael Eric Dyson: Keep doing that. horrible misdeed in the name of democracy, or even Rupert Murdoch had to admit in deposition under. That many of, including Tucker Carlson and them knew that election fraud was false, that they were lies. It just came out yesterday and today Rupert Murdoch is confessing because he couldn’t tell a lie.

[00:40:57] Michael Eric Dyson: He could have, but he didn’t under oath that they knew that many of the people at Fox knew that these were reliance and were mocking Donald Trump. But then now Fox has tried to file his own thing. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t. Yeah, okay. Fox, and that those who were there as a station, we still have to be open to, convey the news.

[00:41:17] Michael Eric Dyson: It was a bunch of balderdash or as,Biden would say malarkey. So the thing is that nobody better than Panille Joseph to break that down. This president has done extraordinary stuff and at the, black, history month meeting at the White House, laid it out, out again. No, it ain’t sexy. No, it ain’t, something explosive.

[00:41:36] Michael Eric Dyson: You go, oh my God, look what he did. It is the cumulative impact of the things that he is doing, and it’s the way in which he does it. And his background in Delaware has given him his, he talks about all time his relationship to these black men. Hey, I tell you what, you can criticize him if you want, but it changed his life.

[00:41:52] . Yes. Did he do the, did he do the crime bill? Of course he did. Along with a bunch of other black people, along with other, b a bunch of black, leaders along with the other, a bunch of black people in the streets going, bill Clinton, do something about these damn crack dealers out here in these streets, and these people stealing from us.

[00:42:08] they begged him. So please don’t try to be all high and mighty about that. And number two, he was also on the busing, name me a white person that really wasn’t name me a white person that really wasn’t against that and was like, what you doing and you messing up my neighborhoods?

[00:42:21] Michael Eric Dyson: The thing is, you have to have a Janet Jackson philosophical pedigree. What have you done for me lately? And what Biden has done lately is pretty remarkable. The guy stood for eight years on in the Gap defending Barack Obama. , like he earned his stripes back into the, if you will, the picnic . he got his invitation to the picnic and judging by those black folk up in the White House, they were loving him, being at the picnic.

[00:42:48] Michael Eric Dyson: And he knew the right language. He had the right intonation. they were saying, he didn’t say, I ain’t a white guy, He said, I might. He said, I’m a white boy. But I ain’t stupid. He knew the cadence, he knew the pitch. He knew the arena within which he was expressing himself and the freedom rhetorically to say so.

[00:43:04] Michael Eric Dyson: And there have been, I think Exaggerations when he was on Charlemagne, the God and he says, if you black and you ain’t voted for me, you ain’t black. That’s inside black

[00:43:12] Peniel: discourse, bro. Yeah, he took that too seriously.

[00:43:15] Michael Eric Dyson: he. Of course he was. And the point is, his point is he was so familiar with blackness.

[00:43:20] Michael Eric Dyson: He could say it in a way. Yeah, exactly. And understood that. Yeah. But again, Peniel Joseph breaks all this stuff down. First read Peniel Joseph, the daily stuff, and his, and lemme tell you this, it’s rare to have both, bifocals and long views. And this guy got a telescope and bifocals, he can see the in nitty gritty in the day-to-day.

[00:43:36] Michael Eric Dyson: And then he can back up and give you the long view. So I say all that to. , what they can do is to continue to preach. what Biden was doing the other day is preaching. I think Kamala’s getting more comfortable in her skin. It’s tough as a black woman. Absolutely. If I act too black, I can’t, Yes. I can’t be accepted and at the other time, a lot of people leaving my adminis, my administration than, cuz just cause you a black woman don’t mean you. Perfect. That’s what I meant about Absolutely believe black women. There’s some difficulties going on there. Absolutely. Yeah. But if you can work ’em out, I think Joe Biden is extraordinary.

[00:44:04] Michael Eric Dyson: I think history will treat him. Extraordinarily positively. . I think that what he’s doing is setting the course just by doing the work. Again, it’s not the sexy spectacular, it’s the unsexy normal. And the unsexy normal is where real change occurs. Not in the march. I have a dream. One day that’s not, that’s beautiful that, that sparks motion, it sparks mobility, but it’s the unsexy everyday negotiation.

[00:44:31] Michael Eric Dyson: And we in Birmingham, Andy, go over there and talk to these business leaders about what’s happening here. Can we get up into the local? That’s where the unsexy normal is, where we negotiate our futures and begin to compromise or create possibilities. o on a daily. So he continues to do what he’s doing.

[00:44:49] Michael Eric Dyson: He continues to give speeches like at the state union where he sets them up. it was brilliant. It was brilliant. Statesmanship. He and gamesmanship. He set these folk up. He knew they would respond. Bobert and Lauren Green, all these people. And then he said, I’m just looking at your look at look.

[00:45:04] Michael Eric Dyson: Go look at your own people. That’s what they did. It’s beautiful wordplay and this thing about age is balderdash as well. This man is quite aware. He’s quite keenly capable of moving forward and I think if we get another term out of him, what he has done, what he has committed to, what he has said to black people publicly.

[00:45:24] Michael Eric Dyson: I ain’t heard no President Black. I owe you, you helped me and I know it. He’s putting himself on calls, so to speak. , he’s putting himself, in a, in the realm of accountability. And there at the White House the other day, he shouts out Claron again. And I told Claron, I said, you know what? you say what you wanna do.

[00:45:42] Michael Eric Dyson: I said, that white man there recognize this. Excuse me, that you helped him and he always gives you your due. Yeah, and in ways, I know y’all don’t want to hear this, some of y’all out there, Obama was slicker. He signified better. He had the symbolic politics down and he therefore got over on Negroes and ways.

[00:46:02] Michael Eric Dyson: in which he was not held accountable. He was an amazing president, top 10 of all time. But when it comes to blackness, not so much. Yeah. Biden, on the other hand, has white privilege and the ability to do some things that, that Obama couldn’t do, but he also has the courage to try to do things. as you said, the Supreme Court is gonna look very skeptical about the student loan. , we know that benefited. Anything that is perceived to benefit, black people will be under attack, but unlike with Obama, Biden is not discouraged. What’s the next move? What’s the next curve? What’s the next issue I can, attach myself to, to make a difference if they continue to do that?

[00:46:38] Michael Eric Dyson: I think we’re in good

[00:46:39] Peniel: shape. All right, we’re gonna close it right there with my dear friend and brother, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson. We’ve been having this amazing conversation with Michael Eric Dyson, who’s the Distinguished University professor of African American Studies at Vanderbilt University, one of America’s premier public intellectuals.

[00:46:56] Peniel: The author of 26 books, one of the latest is entertaining. Performing blackness in America, but there’s so many other great biographies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Marvin Gaye, Tupac Shakur. Great book on Naz, on Jay-Z, on Bobby Kennedy and James Baldwin , where true sounds like. And I’m using that now for a book I’m writing on 1963.

[00:47:20] Peniel: Brilliant account, Michael Eric Dyson. Thank you so much Dr. Dyson for sharing your wisdom with us Professor

[00:47:26] Michael Eric Dyson: Pinel Joseph. The embodiment of Black genius and black excellence. I thank you so much for having me on the show,

[00:47:31] Peniel: brother. Thank you. I’ve been reading Dr. Dyson for 30 years and it just gets better and better.

[00:47:37] Peniel: Bless you, my man. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode, and you can check out related content on Twitter at Penal Joseph. That’s P E N I E l J o S e p h, and our website, csr d.lbj.uex.edu. And the Center for Study of Race and Democracies on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal arts development studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:48:12] Peniel: Thank you.