Police departments often encourage a bunker mentality of "us against the world." If they are forced to share economic and informational resources with other stakeholders in public safety, we can facilitate a transition from a sense of strict ownership reinforced by territorial domains to a cooperative enterprise driven by public service.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 94
If we take into account the most exigent demands of community protection, as well as the relatively small percentage of emergency interventions that are presently called for, especially in beleaguered inner-city communities, we may be able to do two things. First, we can reconstruct the administrative infrastructure of policing so that the chain of command is shared with multiple agencies of safety and protection. Second, we can redesign the architecture of police units and disperse their duties across a number of agencies while decentralizing both their composition and their authority.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 93
The harmful persistence of police brutality suggests that no amount of community policing, civilian review boards (even with extensive oversight), presidential commissions on policing, or the like has much of a chance to succeed. Police unions across the nation have accumulated enormous power and continually undermine efforts to rein in the abuse of authority by police. So it seems worth a try to approach the abolition of policing with a mind to rearrange internal relations between police departments and other agencies that address needs -- especially mental health -- presently gathered under the rubric of policing.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 93
When it comes to the police, many of these communities, and the politicians who serve them, might well adapt President Clinton's phrase about affirmative action: mend, don't end, policing. Mend the hurtful gap between law enforcement and people of color so that cops become servants of the community's best interests while protecting community members from the neighborhood's worst impulses.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 92
(George Floyd's death) was preceded by too many Black deaths to name, too many Black deaths to absorb, too many Black deaths to remember, too many Black deaths to account for, too many Black deaths to obsess over. Forcing Black folk to obsess over death saps our power and distracts us from the full pursuit of life. In the wake of such an obsession, Black life slowly and imperceptibly ebbs away, slipping through the cracks while hardly anyone beyond our culture pays attention.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 59
"Black is beautiful" rang out in the sixties, "I am somebody" echoed in the seventies, and "Black lives matter" resonates in our day. More than slogans or hashtags, these are verbal efforts to stave off the terror of dead Black bodies. Please remember that, white brothers and sisters, the next time one of your friends argues that "all lives matter."
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 44
The recording of Walter Scott being cut down was so terrifying because it was completely random. Is that not the point of terror, to make us all fear that any of us at any time might be its victim? I have said this before, in books, in sermons, in speeches, and in lectures, and it bears repeating here, again, because its truth is still not clear ... to be Black in America is often to feel under siege, to feel, in the marrow of our bones, genuine terror. To feel that no matter how much education or money we have, how nice a car we drive, how well behaved we are, how disarming and articulate we prove ourselves to be, at any moment we might feel a baton crushing our skull, a Taser sending a jolting message to our nervous system, a bullet penetrating our flesh. All because, and for no other reason than, we are Black.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 41
The development of new technology has permitted the truth of Black life to circulate far beyond our culture. This is particularly helpful when Black folk have had the nearly impossible task of convincing the world that what we say about how we are treated is true.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 35
The myth of Blacks as dangerous showed up in slavery, and in the Confederacy, when white supremacy took to horseback. It showed up, too, in Reconstruction's Black Codes, aimed at restricting Black mobility, and in sharecropping, where the slave plantation was reborn. The idea showed up as well during Jim Crow when oppression flowed in segregated water fountains, hotels, bars, and swimming pools. When we resist such efforts, it seems to confirm white fears. Our effort to shake off white obstruction and move forward reinforces the belief that we are dangerous animals in need of policing by white society.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 30-31
... the malevolent pursuit of Ahmaud (Arbery) reveals another bruising paradox in Black life: even as quarters of white America loathe Black bodies, there is at once a lust for Blackness -- yes, to control it, but also to get inside it, to be near something grudgingly admired. To be sure, it is the sort of admiration one has for any animal that is threatening, as one marvels at its strength and cunning, its pluck and crafty ingenuity. Such prowess is cheered when it flashes on the athletic field. When it ranges beyond the arena, it is feared, even stalked, subdued, and, if necessary, killed.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 30
I think of (Emmett Till), a boy I never met, far more often than I should, far more than any of us who never met you should. Not because we shouldn't care about the fate of a boy we never met, but because the death of a boy we never met has taken on such outsize meaning. It reminds us always that boys like you, boys like we were, boys who are now ours, too, are just as vulnerable sixty-five years later. It is beyond absurd that the slightest perceived offense in the white mind should have such fatal consequences then or now.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 12
Black death has hounded us from 1619 to this day. The theft of our bodies and futures, and our culture too, has offered the country unimaginable wealth, stability, and enjoyment. The blue plague has descended on our communities, the police bringing us terror from the plantation to the pavement. The wiles of white supremacy have seduced us, teaching us to hate and despise each other, and to take a cheap discount on justice, in ways that dishonor our best traditions. Black bodies have been killed and progress has been stalled to provide white comfort. But still, despite everything, we have continued, must continue, to hope.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 7-8
Dear Elijah [McClain], we are about to see if it is true that we are one, to see if your death and those of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Hadiya Pendleton, Sandra Bland, Clementa Pinckney, and untold others are viewed as worthy of the moral revulsion and, from there, the change of practice and belief that would prove a real reckoning is taking place.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 7
My fellow Americans, I beg of you, first consider this: Do you realize how much faith it takes for me and those like me to write "my fellow Americans?" Do you realize how much energy it takes to summon the will to say those words? Do you realize how weary I am, how weary we are, millions of Black folk in this country -- and right from the start it's a troubled we, a complicated we, a disrupted we -- of being denied recognition as Americans or even as human beings? Do you know that so many Black folk are still full of love for the nation that so often treats us so poorly? We are used to hearing presidents say "my fellow Americans," a phrase composed of a pronoun, adjective, and noun, to suggest the bond we share as citizens. Grammar is one thing, citizenship an entirely different affair. Has the sentiment ever really been true for Black folk? Do we really live in the same country as white folk? Do we see the same things? Do we experience the same realities? Is our nation's motto fully realized: E pluribus unum, "Out of many, one"?
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 6-7
When my sons were in high school and pictures of Philando Castile were on the front page of the Times, I wanted to burn all the newspapers so they would not see the gun coming in the window, the blood on Castile's T-shirt, the terror in his partner's face, and the eyes of his witnessing baby girl. But I was too late, too late generationally, because they were not looking at the newspaper; they were looking at their phones, where the image was a house of mirrors straight to Hell.
-- Elizabeth Alexander
Black men, Black women, Black kids, we are terrified.... You have no idea how that cop that day left the house.... You don't know if he had an argument at home with his significant other. You don't know if his kids said something crazy to him and he left the house steaming. Or maybe he just left the house thinking that today is going to be the end of one of these Black people. That's what it feels like. It hurts.
-- LeBron James
Creativity is the ability to toggle between wonder and rigor to solve problems and produce novel value.
-- Natalie Nixon
I feel like I have been around the world and back again. I speak to friends about retirement and they ask me if I want to travel. I smile at their question and tell them no. No, I've been places few have been to and many more will never know. When I retire, I will write and read and walk and enjoy the sun on my face. I am not driven anymore.
-- Kory Martin-Damon, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 230
I am now on the cusp of my fifty-sixth year of life. I have no concept, no idea, no definition of gender. To me, women and men are equally strange and fascinating creatures. How can you not question gender? It seems so artificial to me ... Although I am still exhausted from my journey through gender, I have a deep sense of peace, fulfillment, and joy. I've carved paths for myself in my search for language to define who I am, only to finally realize my sense of self cannot be caged by a word. There is nowhere to go but inside, nothing to be but a human being.
-- Kory Martin-Damon, Nonbinary Memoirs of Gender and Identity, p. 230
