Quote of the Day

Beloved, Donald Trump is what we are left with when whiteness drains the body politic of crucial self-awareness and we stiffen into a moral corpse.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 220

Quote of the Day

I hoped that my candidacy -- and if things worked out, my presidency -- would be viewed as the next chapter in the long progressive struggle to make the country fairer, freer, and stronger, and to beat back a seriously scary right-wing agenda.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 77

Quote of the Day

Empathy must be cultivated.  The practice of empathy means taking a moment to imagine how you might behave if you were in our positions.  Do not tell us how we should act if we were you; imagine how you would act if you were us.  Imagine living in a society where your white skin marks you for disgust, hate, and fear.  Imagine that for many moments.  Only when you see black folk as we are, and imagine yourselves as we have to live our lives, only then will the suffering stop, the hurt cease, the pain go away.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 212

Quote of the Day

I was also acutely aware that, as the first woman to be a credible candidate for President, I looked and sounded different than any presidential candidate in our country's history.  I had no precedent to follow, and voters had no historical frame of reference to draw upon.  It was exhilarating to enter uncharted territory.  But uncharted, by definition, means uncertain.  If I felt that way, I was sure that a lot of voters would feel even more wary about it.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 76-77

Quote of the Day

Whiteness must shed its posture of competence, its will to omniscience, its belief in its goodness and purity, and then walk a mile or two in the boots of blackness.  The siege of hate will not end until white folk imagine themselves as black folk -- vulnerable despite our virtues.  If enough of you, one by one, exercises your civic imagination, and puts yourself in the shoes of your black brothers and sisters, you might develop a democratic impatience for injustice, for the cruel disregard of black life, for the careless indifference to our plight.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 211-212

Quote of the Day

I was running a traditional presidential campaign with carefully thought-out policies and painstakingly built coalitions, while Trump was running a reality TV show that expertly and relentlessly stoked Americans' anger and resentment.  I was giving speeches laying out how to solve the country's problems.  He was ranting on Twitter.  Democrats were playing by the rules and trying too hard not to offend the political press.  Republicans were chucking the rule book out the window and working the refs as hard as they could.  I may have won millions more votes, but he's the one sitting in the Oval Office.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 76

Quote of the Day

Black immigrants often have a leg up on American blacks as well.  They have arrived from societies where they enjoyed equality without regard to color.  Thus they arrive with great assets, skills, and experiences, allowing them to compete in the American marketplace.  These black immigrants faced no color barriers to human capital like those we face in America.  Neither can we discount the exotic appeal of foreign blackness.  Many white folk find it far more attractive to deal with a black person from the Caribbean or Africa than American blacks.  Foreign blacks lack the common history of oppression that binds black Americans together.  That difference is a big one for white folk.  You don't feel the sort of pressure of history when you encounter many of those immigrant blacks.  Neither do you feel the sort of white racial guilt you may experience in the presence of American blacks.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 209

Quote of the Day

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.  Life is no "brief candle" to me.  It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Quote of the Day

I have in mind the argument that black folk should do like the European immigrants who came to America and worked hard to become successful.  The best response to such a baseless comparison is a direct one: whiteness matters.  My friends, in the short term, and in the long run, too, being Irish, or Italian, or Polish, or Jewish hasn't been as large a deficit to achievement as color has been for black folk.  It is true that the barriers of language, ethnicity, and culture are big ones, but they don't make the same difference that being black makes.  White immigrants came to this country, and still do, with white skin, the biggest asset possible in a country where whiteness still has tremendous value.  It makes no sense to tell black folk to do what white immigrants did to become successful.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 208-209

Quote of the Day

When people start believing that all politicians are liars and crooks, the truly corrupt escape scrutiny, and cynicism grows.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 47

Quote of the Day

Beloved, your voices are crucial because the doubt of black humanity, the skepticism of black intelligence, and the denial of the worth of black bodies linger in our cultural unconscious and shadow our national politics.  If you challenge white ignorance, or indifference, to the plight of people of color, it will lend our cause needed legitimacy.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 208

Quote of the Day

For Trump, if everyone's down in the mud with him, then he's no dirtier than anyone else.  He doesn't have to do better if everyone else does worse.  I think that's why he seems to relish humiliating people around him.  

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 47

Quote of the Day

The more black folk you know, the less likely you are to stereotype us.  The less you stereotype us, the less likely you are to fear us.  The less you fear us, the less likely you are to want to hurt us, or to accept our hurt as the price of your safekeeping.  The safer you feel, the safer we'll be.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 207

Quote of the Day

For us, there is only the trying.  The rest is not our business.

-- T. S. Eliot

Quote of the Day

Whether one like or loathed Barack Obama's politics, there is no denying that he is one of the most profound, impressive, gifted, and inspiring Americans this nation has seen in quite some time.  And yet there was a relentless attempt to make him the "other."  The collective effort to deprive Obama of his legitimacy, of his citizenship, of his humanity, scarred the body politic and did great damage to our efforts to move this county beyond its heinous racial history.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 206

Quote of the Day

A two-dimensional cartoon is easier to digest than a fully formed person.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 46

Quote of the Day

Beloved, racism and bigotry are ugly, uncomfortable issues to grapple with.  But if you don't address them, you reinforce the privilege of not having to face up to the truth.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 204

Quote of the Day

Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway.  You'll be "damned if you do and damned if you don't."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Quote of the Day

If white folk refuse to name white privilege for what it is, then it is more likely that you will ignore how black inequality, black suffering, exists all around you.  Those of you who know better than that must tell other white people what you know.  As on of my students says, "if one stays silent" then one is "actually helping racial injustice persist."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 204

Quote of the Day

No woman had ever won the nomination of a major party in the history of our country, let alone the presidency.  It's easy to lose sight of how momentous that is, but when you stop to consider what it means and the possible reasons behind it, it's profoundly sobering.

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, p. 40-41

Quote of the Day

It is your obligation, beloved, to school yourselves, and other white folk, too, about the seductive, mythical, neutrality of whiteness, the belief that you are somehow American without a racial identity, without racial baggage.  "While it is dangerous to say that all whites have equal access to wealth and education," one of my white students writes, "the fact of the matter is that white people will not be followed in a store, frisked on a New York sidewalk, or shot by police at the same rate as black people.  Whites must understand that they benefit from white privilege in order to realize how white privilege creates the space for black oppression."

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 204

Quote of the Day

If Trump had won by 3 million votes, lost electoral college by 80K and Russia had hacked RNC, Republicans would have SHUT DOWN AMERICA.

-- Peter Daou

Quote of the Day

Beloved, you must not only read about black life, but you must school your white brothers and sisters, your cousins and uncles, your loved ones and friends, and all who will listen to you, about the white elephant in the room -- white privilege.  Share with them what you learn about us, but share as well what you learn about yourself, about how whiteness works.  You see, my friends, there is only so much I can say to white folk, only so much they can hear from me or anyone who isn't white.  They may not be as defensive with you, so you must be an ambassador of truth to your own tribes...

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop, p. 203