Image: New York Times

Michael Eric Dyson

Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University

Expert in “gangsta rap” and hip-hop music

Condemned Bill Cosby’s assertion that black Americans should embrace education, be more law-abiding, and learn to speak proper English

Member of the Democratic Socialists of America

Believes that the 9/11 attacks were “predictable to a degree due to America’s past imperialistic practices, and how it is viewed by other countries”

Born in Detroit, Michigan n October 23, 1958, Michael Eric Dyson is an ordained Baptist minister and a professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, whose faculty he joined in 2007. He has also taught at the University of North Carolina, Columbia University, DePaul University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Into much of his teaching, Dyson incorporates his expertise in hip-hop music and “gangsta rap.” Says Dyson: “Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator. Misogyny, violence, materialism, and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life ignored by most Americans. . . . Indeed, gangsta rap’s in-your-face style may do more to force America to confront crucial social problems than a million sermons or political speeches.”

In 1996 Dyson published Between God and Gangsta Rap, which laments the “miserable plight of black men in America,” and calls “[t]he demonization of gangsta rappers” merely “a convenient excuse for cultural and political elites to pounce on a group of artists who are easy prey.”

In 2001 Dyson published Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur, about the life of the late rapper who he lauded as a black Jesus figure. In the book, Dyson writes that Shakur’s “stirring raps made many people see suffering they had never before acknowledged. It helped many desperately unhappy young people reclaim a sense of hope and humanity.”

A member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Dyson joined such notables as Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich in speaking at the organization’s 17th Annual Socialist Scholars Conference in 1999.

At a forum organized by Academics for Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1999, Dyson said that “the Mumia Abu-Jamal case is about the person who is able to articulate the interests of minority people not only in terms of color, but in terms of ideology.” “It is about the repression,” he added, “of left-wing, progressive, insightful cultural criticism and political and moral critique aimed at the dominant hegemonic processes of American capitalism and the American state as evidenced in its racist, imperialist and now we might add homophobic and certainly its patriarchal practices.”

In August 2000, Dyson was a featured speaker at the Los Angeles Shadow Convention’s Drug Policy Reform Day, a gathering of anti-War on Drugs activists, Democratic Progressive Caucus members, and leftist celebrities who condemned existing drug laws as discriminatory and racist. Among those in attendance were Jesse Jackson, Al Franken, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Bill Maher, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, and Tom Hayden.

According to Dyson, the 9/11 terrorist attacks were “predictable to a degree, due to America’s past imperialistic practices and how it is viewed by other countries.” “What I am against,” he elaborated, “is the hypocrisy of a nation [the U.S.] that would help train bin Laden by funneling millions from the CIA to Afghan rebels to put down the Soviets, and now switching sides to funnel money to the Soviets to stop the spread of fundamentalism.”

When asked how Tupac Shakur, were he still alive, would have viewed the 9/11 attacks, Dyson replied: “I think that Tupac would say, ‘What business do we have being in Arab nations when the tentacles of colonialism and capitalism suck the lifeblood of native or indigenous people?’ . . . He would have had questions about who really was the thug. He would have said that America has ignored the vicious consequences of its imperialistic practices across the world. America ignores how millions of people suffer on a daily basis throughout the world, except in isolated spots that involve so-called national interests. Thirdly, that America has forfeited its duty as global policeman, by virtue of its own mistreatment of black people.”

Dyson reacted passionately to a February 26, 2012 incident in Sanford, Florida, in which a “white Hispanic” neighborhood-watch captain named George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old African American named Trayvon Martin. When Zimmerman was subsequently acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges in a July 2013 trial, Dyson said: “So, you know how you felt on 9/11? Yeah, that’s how we [blacks] feel when it comes to race… Not until, and unless, the number of white kids die that approximate the numbers of black and other kids who die, will America see.” More here.