Michael Eric Dyson

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Praise for
Is Bill Cosby Right?

“Dyson, who can coin a phrase with the best of them . . . roundly defends the black youngsters whose circumstances sparked the Cosby campaign.”

—William Raspberry,
Washington Post

 

“Dyson deconstructs the logic of Cosby’s comments and defends poor Blacks.”

 

“Dyson is seen by many as the heir apparent to such black intellectual luminaries as Princeton’s Cornel West and Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. . . . In his Cosby book, Dyson uses history and social science to raise nuanced images of poor black people. . . . And these virtues are abundant in Dyson’s own fluent and gorgeous multilingualism. There is syncopation, repetition, call and response, variations of idiom; there is hilarity, grief, the sly rattle and snap of the rhetorical snare; he samples like a rapper, with scholarly footnotes.”

 

“Well-researched . . . Dyson then dissects these remarks, offering ironic observations that contrast what Cosby is saying about poor people with Cosby’s own unseemly behavior over the years. Dyson’s . . . keen observations, wit and intellectual skills have allowed him to report the material . . . in fresh ways and make this a highly readable book.”

—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

 

“Dyson is evenhanded . . . [and] passionate about this subject, and his advocacy for the poor is admirable. . . . Substantive and well-expressed.”

—Cleveland
Plain Dealer

“Dyson makes a number of genuinely provocative points, particularly while outlining the seemingly insurmountable structural challenges facing those mired in poverty. . . .
Is Bill Cosby Right?
should get a thorough and rigorous airing, because Dyson is onto something: the maturation (some would say collapse) of the black body politic. . . . As I read, I found myself wishing that this book could be debated in a public manner by a panel of thoughtful African-Americans from all walks of life.”

—Anthony Walton,
The News & Observer
(Raleigh, North Carolina)

 

“Withering attack on Cosby for his criticisms of the black poor and why Cosby is letting other factors off the hook that keep the underclass where they are . . . A good reminder to look at the whole picture, including self-help and personal responsibility.”

—Greg Moore,
Denver Post

 

“Informative history and social analysis . . . [of] the long history of black middle-class disdain toward the poor, much of which is rooted in a desire not to give white people a reason to look askance at them. . . . I don’t think the black middle class has lost its mind, but sometimes we all need to take a deep breath and consider what is in our hearts before we engage our mouths.”

—
Seattle Times

 

“Dyson does more than just take off the gloves . . . he’s got brass knuckles underneath ‘em, two sets worth, and he’s ready to rumble. . . . Dyson angrily rises up in defense of what he sees as an attack on the black poor by the ‘Afristocracy’ of intellectuals, civil rights leaders and other members of the African-American establishment.”

—The San Diego
Union-Tribune

 

“Dyson deconstructs Cosby’s career of 40 years as one of the most famous black men in America, and finds him sorely lacking in terms of his relevance or commitment to civil rights issues. . . . [Dyson] is a compelling writer with a keen analytical mind.”

—Eugene Kane, Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel

“[Dyson] examines Cosby’s complaints in a new book and concludes that the rage of elders such as Cosby does little to bring about prison reform, better jobs or adequate funding for public schools. Dyson challenges all of us to work together to find answers to enduring social problems.”

—Tucson
Citizen

 

“A provocative book that will provide fodder for debate and discussion.”

—
Rocky Mountain News

 

”Dyson’s insightful book challenges Blacks and Whites to confront the social problems in the Black community.”

—
Jet

 

“The primary value that [Dyson’s] book serves is to hold the mirror of historical, sociological, political and moral reflection so that one can engage in the debate in a more judicious and less emotional manner.”

—Byron Williams,
Oakland Tribune

 

“Dyson is at least aware that class conflict in the black community goes back to the very beginning. The most striking thing about the discussion that has followed the Cosby comments is the extent to which even well-educated Americans have been surprised to learn that class antagonism exists in the black community at all. This entrenched ignorance about black life was a long time in the making, and is only now being dislodged.”

—Brent Staples,
New York Times

MERCY MERCY ME:
THE ART, LOVES AND DEMONS OF MARVIN GAYE

 

THE MICHAEL ERIC DYSON READER

 

OPEN MIKE:
REFLECTIONS ON PHILOSOPHY, RACE, SEX,
CULTURE AND RELIGION

 

WHY I LOVE BLACK WOMEN

 

HOLLER IF YOU HEAR ME:
SEARCHING FOR TUPAC SHAKUR

 

I MAY NOT GET THERE WITH YOU:
THE TRUE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

 

RACE RULES: NAVIGATING THE COLOR LINE

 

BETWEEN GOD AND GANGSTA RAP:
BEARING WITNESS TO BLACK CULTURE

 

MAKING MALCOLM:
THE MYTH AND MEANING OF MALCOLM X

 

REFLECTING BLACK:
AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURAL CRITICISM

The Rev. Dr. Frederick George Sampson, III
The Rev. Orlando Arnold
Ms. Delores Sampson
Ms. Tommye Arnold
Dear friends who allowed a young, poor father
to live with them in Detroit

 

The Rev. Dr. William Douglas Booth and
Mrs. Ruth Booth
Beloved Second Father in the Ministry
and Motherly Conscience
Who fed me and taught me the true meaning
of ministry and manhood
and
The Rev. Dr. Riggins R. Earl, Jr., and
the late Mrs. Lovelene Earl
Marvelous Mentor and Soul Encourager
Who fed me and first inspired a young pastor
to pursue a Ph.D.

 

Mwata Omotiyo Dyson, M.D.
Beloved son of the heart, who, despite being
told no three times
Pursued his dream and went from anonymous
to Anesthesiologist
Your Mother and I are so proud

On May 17, 2004, Bill Cosby stepped to the podium in Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall. The famed entertainer was to receive an award for his philanthropic endeavors during a gala event commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the
Brown v. Board of Education
decision, sponsored by the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Fund, and Howard University. When Cosby opened his mouth, instead of lauding the efforts of civil rights pioneers, he bitterly scorned poor blacks for “
not
holding up their end in this deal.” The
Washington Post
, which broke the story, reports that Cosby lamented that activists “marched and were hit in the face with rocks . . . to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around,” referring to the “lower economic people” of the race. Cosby accused them of “not parenting,” and said that they
“cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit”—meaning those in jail and prison—while failing to prevent their children’s criminal behavior. “Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was twelve? Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol? And where is his father?”

Cosby also attacked black youth who “put their clothes on backward: Isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong?” He assailed the young black girl who “got all type of needles [piercing] and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a damned thing about Africa.” The venerable father figure also lambasted black parents who give their children “names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and
Muhammad
and all that crap,” adding that “all of ’em are in jail.” Cosby repeatedly accosted the black poor—with a few black millionaire ball players thrown in for good measure—for their failure to master literacy. He said—referring to black children as inanimate objects—that “[i]t’s standing on da corner. It can’t speak English. It doesn’t want to speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk. ‘Why you ain’t, where you is go. . . .’ I don’t know who these people are.”

The entertainer also assailed poor black mothers and fathers for their horrible parenting skills, saying they buy their kids “$500 sneakers” but refuse to “spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.” Cosby claimed that most black inmates are not “political criminals” but folk who go “around stealing Coca Cola” and who get “shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! And then we all run out and we’re outraged,
‘Ah, the cops shouldn’ta shot him.’ What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?” Cosby pounded the black poor for their abysmal educational track record, citing their “50 percent drop out [rate]” from high school and charging that black folk are “raising our own ingrown immigrants.” On and on Cosby went, berating black parents and youth for their numerous faults, his ramblings united by one theme: the miserable condition of the black poor brought on by their own self-destructive behavior. More recently, Cosby appeared at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Citizenship Fund’s annual conference and widened his attack on the black poor, saying that the charge of airing dirty laundry leveled against him paled in comparison to the bleak reality of blasphemous black children. “Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it’s cursing and calling each other nigga as they’re walking up and down the street. They think they’re hip. They can’t read; they can’t write. They’re laughing and giggling, and they’re going nowhere.”
¹

Cosby’s remarks are not the isolated ranting of a solo rhetorical gun slinger, but simply the most recent, and the most visible, shot taken at poor blacks in a more-than-century-old class war in black America. His views are widely held among a number of black constituencies—it is not unusual to hear some black poor and working-class members themselves joining Cosby’s ranks in barbershops and beauty salons across America. But Cosby’s beliefs are most notably espoused by the
Afristocracy:
upper-middle-class blacks and the black elite who rain down fire and brimstone upon poor blacks for their deviance and pathology, and for their lack of couth and culture.
The Afristrocracy—composed of lawyers, physicians, intellectuals, civil rights leaders, entertainers, athletes, bankers and the like—rail in private (which includes, ironically enough, spaces in the “black public,” including churches, schools, conventions and social gatherings, that are usually beyond the reach, or the interest, of the masses of whites, especially the white media) about the pernicious habits of the black poor but rarely make the sort of news Cosby did by letting their bilious beliefs slip into wide public view.