Quote of the Day

... if white folk are serious about the siege of ignorance coming to an end, the sort of ignorance that helped to end (Sandra Bland's) life, then they've got to put themselves into uncomfortable circumstances; they must reject the comfort of ignoring the raw Black truth that Black folk must live with.  Such learning doesn't happen overnight; it can't be done in CliffsNotes version of Black identity.  White brothers and sisters must deliberately expose themselves to experiences that force them to grow.  They've got to swim in the pools of our thoughts and expressions, our resistance and rebellion, our tragedies and traumas, our arguments and disagreements, our joys and affections, our love and happiness.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 192

Quote of the Day

Caught between stereotypes and vast ignorance, many whites find that their knowledge of Black life is severely limited.  In sharp contrast, most Black folk are hardly surprised, though always proud, that Black people are diligent, ethical, and smart.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 192

Quote of the Day

... many whites believe they're doing a good thing when they single out Black folk for having traits they don't normally associate with Blackness: hard work, clean character, sparkling intelligence.  But that says more about white folk than Black folk.  Thus, to compliment some Black folk for showcasing excellence in a number of pursuits is to tell on one's skepticism that Black culture is the breeding ground for such habits and traits.  These figures and features of Black life are seen as "more than Black" -- not typically Black, hence not representatively Black, and thus not really Black at all.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 191-192

Quote of the Day

Some white folk have deemed the study of Black life and history uninteresting.  Some whites claim it is irrelevant to the larger American narrative, arguing that Black folk didn't have much to do with shaping the events of our history.  Some whites were never taught a sense of Black achievement in class or at home.  Others are unapologetically anti-Black and disdain the study of Black life.  Still others boast a negative literacy about Black life, what might be called an ill-literacy, in which the point of studying Black life is to take measure of its supposed social corruption and moral depravity -- to prove through myopic statistics that Black folk are plagued by greater social pathology, commit more crime, are less interested in education, don't behave well in public, are psychologically toxic and intellectually inferior, have dysfunctional family structures, ruin neighborhoods with their questionable values, and deserve their low status in society.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 189

Quote of the Day

... one of the greatest white comforts is not having to know anything about Black life.  There is little pressure to know its epic sweep and narrative grandeur, its political struggle and social triumph, its moral heroism and existential courage, its intellectual complexity and its transcendent cultural trajectory, all met by relentless resistance and outright hostility from a myriad of white forces.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 188

Quote of the Day

Jim Crow, and in many ways white life ever since, was constructed for white comfort: to keep Blacks and others from drinking at the same water fountains, eating at the same restaurants, riding on the same buses, sitting in the same classrooms, playing on the same diamonds, gridirons, or courts, worshiping in the same sanctuaries, and, God forbid, being buried in the same cemeteries, all because white folk believed that they were superior and that they should be spared the discomfort of having to be near what and whom they were better than.  And, just in case their heightened view of themselves proved to be false, they spared themselves the discomfort of confronting the ugly truth.  Thus they protected themselves from any contradictions of or challenges to these notions.  Where the South's brand of de jure segregation didn't work, the North's de facto separation proved just as good.  White folk were comforted, and that comfort kept them from knowing too much of anything that was worth knowing about Black life.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 185-186

Quote of the Day

It is a truth we have to confront amidst our national racial reckoning: so much of Black and Brown life, and that of Indigenous and Asian folk, too, has been lived with the imperative to reinforce white comfort.  Yes, white privilege, white innocence, and white fragility are real and must be acknowledged and grappled with.  But we must also confront white comfort, which is basically the arrangement of the social order for the convenience of white folk, one that offers them comfort as a noun, that is, ease and relief from pain or limits or constraints, and comfort as a verb, that is, taking action to console white grief or distress.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 184-185

Quote of the Day

Most white folk fail to get this when they ask, "Why don't you just cooperate?"  Besides the fact that most of us do cooperate, as countless videos prove, there's the larger issue of how one must suddenly contort one's bodily expressions and fold one's entire history and being into a made-for-white-comfort presentation: the Black person speaks when spoken to, says things loudly enough to be heard but not too loudly.  The margin of error is extremely tight in such high-octane situations.  It's just all too much.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 183

Quote of the Day

... the circumstance with cops is that they always have the gun, the badge, the baton, the authority, and the official stamp of approval.  And when they kill you, they have qualified immunity plus the unqualified support of the state and much of the white public, which just can't seem to understand that we are sick to our souls from the repeated cycle of death at the hands of cops.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 182

Quote of the Day

But when it comes to black life in America, there's only one conclusion I can reach about some white people: You don't care to put yourself in our shoes.  The consequences of this lack of imagination for black Americans are deadly....If you don't have much interest in how we live and love, you'll never understand what we're fighting to preserve....White people have never needed to exercise that kind of curiosity.  You've never had to.  You can live your whole lives without really considering how we live ours.  We, on the other hand, know you very well.  We've had to.  We had no choice.

-- Kasi Lemmons

Quote of the Day

Because there are painfully fewer creative outlets for Black folk in comparison to the dominant culture, far too big a burden is put on the television shows, plays, visual art, and books that do get circulated.  And this has characterized the discussion of Black culture from the beginning of this country.  When it comes to broadly circulated visual representation, the stakes are especially high -- and typically contradictory.  Every film must abide by strict standards and solve every issue: uplift the race but don't neglect the downtrodden, be positive and redemptive yet probe the dark dimensions of Black life, engage white supremacy but underscore Black agency, depict the trauma of slavery but show how slavery didn't exhaust our identities, renounce the politics of respectability but don't embarrass Black folk, embrace the streets but don't romanticize thugs, appreciate the diaspora but don't give too many parts to African actors.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 161-162

Quote of the Day

It seems with cancel culture that we lack a means of restitution or restoration, and willingness to endure the discomfort of growth.  We settle for snuffing out what we don't like.  But there is no progress if we simply cancel what contradicts our beliefs or ideals.  This, again, is white supremacy's methodology.  Genuine racial reckoning must assume that change is still possible.  The futility of cancel culture justice is that it wipes out the individual but leaves the system standing.  To paraphrase sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, we end up with, for instance, misogyny without misogynists.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 155-156

Quote of the Day

There is a real danger in giving up in a moment of serious reckoning.  The criminal justice system has too often failed women, failed to address sexual violence and much more.  Cancel culture takes matters into its own hands, offering the illusion of justice.  But we are confusing the manner of arriving at justice -- the careful method of weighing evidence, the articulation of broad principles of agreement -- with the poor outcomes we are often left with.  In the end, beyond arguments about methods and means is the crucial recognition that in a true democracy, things are often messy, that you often don't get what you want or deserve immediately, and that you have to constantly engage, protest, resist, and negotiate.  In short, you have to be an astute and careful citizen, like both Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 152-153

Quote of the Day

Cancel culture is undeniably a judgment of our failure to address systemic and structural issues.  I understand its lure to the relatively powerless: it gives the illusion that we are finally having significant movement on serious issues that keep getting delayed or denied.  Is it any surprise that it is largely associated with sexism and racism, two of the biggest problems we can't seem to get a handle on?

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 152

Quote of the Day

One need not be religious at all to believe that we should be willing to give what we seek: charitable interpretations of behavior and a willingness to offer just appraisals of conduct with an eye toward fairness.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 149-150

Quote of the Day

To be sure, when leaders with fascist leanings gripe about cancel culture, they are griping about being held even slightly accountable in a democracy whose very principles they tout but effortlessly ignore.  Some powerful folk cry about the scourge of cancel culture when, for instance, they can no longer justify flying Confederate flags or praising Confederate statues as conscientious citizens bring them down.  When figures who abuse power are finally brought to justice because of the words or protests of the relatively powerless, then cancel culture may seem a good thing.  But those are the easy cases with straightforward results.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 148-149

Quote of the Day

It was white America that rejected [Martin Luther] King's vision of nonviolence -- not Black folk.  America wouldn't listen to what nonviolent Black folk said, so now they are speaking differently -- not violently, but far more aggressively.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 135

Quote of the Day

Those contrasting Black self-destruction with the quest for fair play and righteous conduct rarely stop to consider that when Black folk politely ask for justice, make calm arguments, try to reason with the powers that be, they are rarely heard.  When former professional quarterback Colin Kaepernick, as part of the Black "next," took a knee on the gridiron to highlight police brutality, the white "again" portrayed him as if he had attempted to send society to its death.  They went so far as to banish him from the National Football League.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 133-134

Quote of the Day

As for the rare folk who have destroyed property [in the anger that occasionally flares up in the streets], there is often the rebuttal: it makes no sense to destroy your own neighborhood.  But what does a neighborhood mean if a cop can come onto your street and -- in your case, dear sister Breonna (Taylor) -- into your home and kill you?  If you don't own your own body, what, in the end, do you really own?  Those flames seem unwarranted to many white brothers and sisters.  But when they decry Black self-destruction, they often ignore the systemic white destruction of Black life and neighborhoods.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 133

Quote of the Day

The powerful rise of the Black "next" in contemporary Black protest as we reckon with systemic racism has been met by the reactionary forces of the white "again," notably President Trump, who has commandeered military forces to descend on American cities in a profane violation of civic virtue and the rights of citizens to assemble and argue on their feet for the social good.  This president has set a political precedent that not even our most acidly conservative leaders have dared to establish.  The trumping up of false allegations against protesters -- that they are troublemaking anarchists, that they hate America, that they are the reason racial justice continues to be thwarted -- is part of the ratcheting up of racial bigotry.  It is a cynical summons of the biting words of white nationalism from a deep cesspool of racial intolerance -- a gesture that, in concert with the president's other politically destructive moves, has the nation teetering on the edge of the neofascist abyss.  The white "again" has rarely possessed a voice that echoes disdain for racial justice as loudly as Trump's.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 132-133

Quote of the Day

Black Lives Matter and most other Black freedom movements have attempted to address the vicious consequences of slavery's legacy in Black life: the theft of Black land, social opportunity, and social mobility; the prison industrial complex; inequities in education, employment, and housing.  All these have left many Black folk permanently poor, vulnerable to disease, socially dislocated, and resorting to crime, especially stealing food to feed families or engaging in other illegal activities to support kin.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 130-131

Quote of the Day

The revolutionary cries of Black Lives Matter rest upon a simple yet poignant foundation: that Black lives, which haven't mattered, should matter, and that we must reform the criminal justice system, greatly change if not abolish the police, and grapple with systemic racism.  

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 130

Quote of the Day

The white "again" is a refusal to let true democracy take hold.  Those who actually believe in this country are those who, out of utter frustration, civic humiliation, or racial solidarity, have taken to the streets to protest.  Those whose belief in America is shaky are the ones opposing Black citizens who simply want to enjoy the same rights they do, who want the same benefit of the doubt offered to them.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 118-119

Quote of the Day

In the social and political order, the Black "next" insists on the new, the hopeful, the transformative, often against any possibility of its realization.  The white "again" bitterly clings to the past.  If Black politics and the culture of "next" have often expressed the desire to make history anew, then the white world of the stubborn "again" holds fast to a highly selective version of the past.  The white "again" cloaks its centuries-long will to control Black bodies in talk of tradition and conserving values.  The white "again" seeks ways to deny Black progress.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 116

Quote of the Day

In many ways, the slave patrols, and later law enforcement, were the instruments of the state used to protect the theft of Black life and of the rights and privileges of full citizenship.  The police not only brutalized Black bodies but dented the armor of social equality and civil rights by threatening the physical safety, civic well-being, and political progress of Black culture.  If the state stole, the police protected its theft and discouraged rebellion against its unjust practices.  There is no greater sign of such efforts at ruthless containment as when the police flood the streets to meet and turn back Black bodies on the march for justice.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 113-114

Quote of the Day

The "we" that dots the Declaration of Independence gathers force and definition from stating not only what Americans were but what Americans were not: not British, not "merciless savages" like the Indians, and not "domestic insurrectionists" like the Black folk.  Yes, they, the royal "we," have always accused us, the disloyal "them" of rioting.  They said this even as they looted and rioted and rose up against the British folk they wanted to divorce.  Like them, we fought in Revolutionary times because we wanted to be free.  But our bonds with the nation were continually shredded.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 102-103

Quote of the Day

DEAR BREONNA TAYLOR, I don't even know where to begin.  I am outraged, like so many people are outraged, undoubtedly more folks than you might ever have imagined, that our democracy has failed you.  Three cops barged into your apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, with a no-knock warrant and murdered you in cold blood.  They didn't even identify themselves as police, and to compound the tragedy, they had the wrong person and the wrong house.  Yet the police officer who killed you was neither arrested nor charged, and the lone cop who was indicted was charged only with wanton endangerment of your white neighbor.  Your valiant boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired on the invaders, but he couldn't save you.  And while the city pledged to pay your family $12 million and implement changes to prevent future deaths by cops, your killer remains free and justice is denied.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 99-100

Quote of the Day

Our country was built on looting -- the looting of Indigenous lands and African labor.  African-Americans, in fact, have much more experience being looted than looting.... White mobs, often backed by the police, not only looted and burned black homes and businesses but also maimed and killed black people.  Our bodies were loot.  The forced extraction of our labor was loot.  A system of governance that suppressed our wages, relieved us of property and excluded black people from equal schools and public accommodations is a form of looting.

-- Robin D. G. Kelley

Quote of the Day

Still, as George Floyd's death suggests, the knees of the nation have been on the necks of Black America for centuries.  It took a Black man's suffering and suffocated body to pump oxygen into the body politic so that we might all breathe.  But we can't stop here.  Unless white folk grapple with how they have harmed the pasts and stolen the futures of Black folk, they won't be able to claim that they have participated in a true reckoning with racial oppression in America.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 95-96

Quote of the Day

When we saw the video of George Floyd's killing, something in Black folk snapped.  We realized, again, that nothing we have done has stopped the cops from taking our lives.  In that moment it all came crashing down on us: Cops are the state.  Cops are the white society that see us as animals.  Cops are judge and jury and may execute us at will.  Thus we are all vulnerable.

-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 95