In the wake of yet another set of police killings of black men, Michael Eric Dyson wrote a tell-it-straight, no-holds-barred piece for the NYT on Sunday, July 7: “Death in Black and White” (it was updated within a day to acknowledge the killing of police officers in Dallas). The response has been overwhelming. Beyoncé and Isabel Wilkerson tweeted it; JJ Abrams, among many other prominent people, wrote him a long fan letter. The NYT closed the comments section after 2,500 responses, and Dyson has been on NPR, BBC, and CNN nonstop since then.
Fifty years ago Malcolm X told a white woman who asked what she could do for the cause, “Nothing.” Dyson believes he was wrong. In Tears We Cannot Stop, he responds to that question. If we are to make real racial progress, we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted. As Dyson writes, “At birth you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead…. The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know…. You think we have been handed everything because we fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it – all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace – should be yours first and foremost, and if there’s anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully.”
In the tradition of The Fire Next Time (Baldwin), short, emotional, literary, powerful, this is the book that all Americans who care about the current and long-burning crisis in race relations need to hear.
This book was gorgeous and beautifully written – worth it for the writing alone – … This book was gorgeous and beautifully written – worth it for the writing alone – but the subject Michael Eric Dyson grapples with so earnestly is so incredibly important right now. His love and sense of urgency shines through and encourages us all to keep fighting.
To heal, what is calcified must first be broken “What I need to say can only be said as a sermon.” And preach Michael Eric Dyson does. His sermon, an epistle to White America that for the author is long overdue is, at the same time, a book that we may well not have ever opened or read.
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. On behalf of America we thank you. Absolutely brilliant. Your riveting use of factual history is amazing. This book is really a pilgrimage of the reader’s soul. It forces you to come to terms with your own thoughts and use of race. We would have a better world if this book were required reading for all high school and college students. On behalf of America, I thank you and your family. GREAT JOB!