Dyson: White People Need to Confront Truths About Racism

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, George Floyd’s death, of course, is a wakeup call for the world, as we have seen, but, for black Americans, it is the latest chapter in a long history of violence that we have been discussing and oppression. And Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of sociology at Georgetown University who’s written extensively about race relations. In 2017, he authored “Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America,” which calls on white people to confront uncomfortable truths about racism. And here he is speaking to our Hari Sreenivasan.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Thanks, Christiane. Thanks, Michael, for joining us. And I want to ask. Perhaps our initial shock has subsided from seeing the video and seeing the response to it. And as we go through our different stages of grief, I kind of wonder whether, this time, it sticks. I want to start by sharing this image that I saw on Twitter the other day, and it’s this young woman who’s holding a sign that says: “George Floyd isn’t a wakeup call. The same alarm has been ringing since 1619. You all just kept keep hitting snooze.”

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: There’s no question that there are two different universes of perception rotating around different axes of facts, truth and insight. On the one hand is African-American people, other people of color as well, indigenous folk as well, who have had an experience where they have been, as Malcolm X used to say, the victims of democracy, according to a Broadway play, right? We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us. So, there have been a people of color. There have been black people. There have been brown, red, yellow people, there have been people in this country, but especially now black people, who have been the victims of slavery, Jim Crow, white supremacy, social injustice, economic inequality, the refusal to acknowledge our humanity, the dehumanization routinely of the police for centuries, and the police at least for a century or more. And so now that the George Floyd incident has occurred, it has indeed awakened so many other elements of another world. That is the other world of white people, who have been privileged in their obliviousness, who have had the leisure of not knowing. And so the problem is that many white brothers and sisters who have never been exposed to or never taking the time to learn about our culture are now indeed being awakened. So, there’s got to be a balance. On the one hand, you have got to say, let’s turn to the people who have been fighting this thing forever, and figure out what they have been doing. And then, on the other hand, we have got to say, well, now that people are willing to learn, we have got to supply the information. Now, I know a lot of people of color said, I’m tired. I don’t want to do this. And I can understand the fatigue. On the other hand, I think people who have been dealing with this for 200, 300 years have to understand, this is new for those people. Let’s figure out a way to bridge the gap and to understand that, in this country, we have a unique opportunity in a tremendously propitious moment to address sustained systemic structural inequities that need to be addressed.

SREENIVASAN: You had a book out a couple of years ago, “Tears We Cannot Stop.” In this moment, what’s the advice that you had written perhaps in your last chapter that resonates?

DYSON: Yes, “A Sermon to White America.” And I think look, now it’s — the times have caught up to the book, so to speak. And what I recommended in that last chapter is read, educate yourselves, go to black marches. Thank God white people took me seriously there, because they have been all over the protest rallies. It’s been beautiful. These are white conscientious people, for the most part, joining black people and other people of color to say, enough is enough. I said, do individual reparations accounts. You don’t have to wait for the government to pass a law to say that you can help out where you see it. I have gotten letters from people: I took your advice seriously, so I saw a local school that needed 20 computers, and I had them, and I gave them to them. So there are all kinds of ways that white people can be just as creative about addressing racial justice as they have been about “Star Wars” and horror movies, as they have been about figuring out how to get to the moon. You mean you can get a man on the moon or a woman right now in outer space, the furthest that she has ever gone, that a woman has ever gone, and you can’t figure out how to control the police department here on Earth? You can’t figure out how to deal with white privilege, white supremacy, social injustice? You can’t figure out what racism is? It’s not just a personal individual dislike for a human being. It’s part of a structure. Think system and structure, not prejudice and individual bias, though they’re all important. This is where they come together in the police, right? An individual of one — quote — “bad cop” can really reignite a debate about a system that is fundamentally indifferent to African-American people. And then you have got an understanding of how race works in America.

SREENIVASAN: Speaking of police, there’s this clip here from the head of the New York police unions.

MICHAEL O’MEARA, PRESIDENT, NEW YORK POLICE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION: But you know what? This isn’t stained by someone in Minneapolis. It’s still got a shine on it. And so do this. So do this. Stop treating us like animals and thugs. And start treating us with some respect. That’s what we’re here today to say. We have been left out of the conversation. We have been vilified. It’s disgusting. It’s disgusting, trying to make us embarrassed of all profession, 375 million interactions overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly positive.

SREENIVASAN: One of the things that I want to make sure that — the context is. When he started his speech to the press, that man said that when he reads a mother saying that she is concerned about her child making it home safely, vs. being killed by a police officer, his response was, that doesn’t happen, that is not this world, right? That is his world view, getting back to what you said earlier about these sort of different axes that — and different perceptions of the world. He would take a lie detector and probably pass, because he does not think that that happens in this world.

DYSON: The reality is, there are two different universes of perception that have their different languages. But I want to thank that gentleman. Why? Take the speech you gave, change the characters, and imagine it’s us, black people — 375 million engagements as human citizens, and a few bad ones, and you want to paint all of us as criminals and thugs. Stop calling us criminals. Stop calling us thugs. We have been doing the right thing. This badge of honor we wear, our black skin, it still shines, despite the demonization you have brought to that. Does he not understand the irony of people who have been criminalized, demonized, seen as thugs begging for the police just to stop killing us? And his response is occasioned by a fundamental plea. Please stop murdering us. Please just take us into custody if you think we have done something wrong. After all, we know you’re capable. There are mass murderers that you take in without event. Young Dylann Roof in South Carolina was taking in peacefully. He was given, supposedly, whether it’s true or not, a hamburger. If that’s been deconstructed, he was treated nicely. He was treated gently. Many men who have gone out and murdered masses of people have been apprehended peacefully. So, my point is, we know you’re capable of doing it. Do it with us. And this kind of awareness, this kind of unawareness, this kind of defensiveness, this kind of refusal to acknowledge the truth is why people are in the street. It’s why people don’t believe you can reform police. You have got to remove them, revolutionarily reconstruct them, defund them, figure out ways to shift both budgets away from police departments. Los Angeles Police Department has, what, shifted $150 million of its budget. In Camden, New Jersey, the police department was disbanded. Out in Minneapolis, Minnesota, they voted to do the same. We can exist without the traditional form of policing occurring, because this ain’t working. And even when we have tried in the past to have oversight of citizens, that is false. We don’t even know when cops do bad things. Governor Cuomo in New York has just put into effect a legislation that will be able to reveal to us cops who have done horrible things. They still have qualified immunity in so many places, where citizens can’t even sue the police people who have done horrible and nasty things. So, when you put all that together, this is extremely disconcerting, that a policeman who seems to be an honest and forthright human being just doesn’t get because it doesn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

SREENIVASAN: Do you think that the phrasing defunding the police ends up playing into the hands of sort of the right, which already are making this a political issue, an election issue? I mean, it’s sort of these lazy dichotomies, you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists, right? You’re either with the cops or you’re with the looters. There’s a huge amount of people in between. And I think that there’s a lot of conflation that, if you are marching peacefully now, you’re automatically against police. And, obviously, that’s not what most of the people that are marching are, right?

DYSON: Right. Right. Yes, no, I think that’s a good point. A couple things I have in response to that. First of all, I’m a person of color. I’m all for redescribing stuff. I’m all for saying whatever is necessary to be said in terms of terminology, not to offend the other person. So, yes, we can talk about creative non-agreement with something, or we can talk about civil disobedience, or we can talk about aggressive nonviolence, as King did. So, yes, language makes a difference. I get that. And so I think we should be able to come up with some terms that achieve the same thing that aren’t necessarily inflammatory. On the other hand, give me a break. That’s what you’re worried about, the language, the linguistic facility with which you articulate your ideological premise, as opposed to black bodies being killed in the street, with the knees of police people pinching the breath from a body? And you’re concerned about the linguistic facility, whether or not it alienates me? What leisure, what distance from horror you live. And listen to black people who have been trying to warn white brothers and sisters from the get-go of how horrible policing is. I don’t know. Listen to your favorite rapper. KRS-One said, who’s going to protect us from you, if you are the protector and servant? Ice Cube said, F. the police, coming straight from the underground. A young brother got his bad because I’m brown and not the other color.

SREENIVASAN: So, police think they have the authority to kill a minority, yes.

DYSON: So, police think they have the authority to kill a minority, right? Or think about Jay-Z. Bin Laden been happening in Manhattan back when, back then, when police were al Qaeda to black men. Listen to the pain, the hurt, the agony that black people have been trying to narrate about police brutality forever. So, while I’m sympathetic to that argument, the streets are aflame. They are — people are afoot. And we need to be afforded the opportunity to change in this country. And the same old, same old ain’t working. So I’m not so worried about offending linguistic propriety, though I’m all for figuring out phrases to get the work done. At the end of the day, this is a new moment. The old stuff hasn’t worked. We got to try some new things.

SREENIVASAN: Speaking of the new moment, are you surprised that the opinion has changed so quickly on Black Lives Matter? I mean, a couple of years ago, when we spoke after Charlottesville, it was — and Colin Kaepernick, it was still out of the mainstream. And here we are, we can literally see the words painted on a street in front of the White House from space.

DYSON: It is rather remarkable. I don’t know if you’re a fight fan or not, not UFC, but maybe that too, but boxing. Body blow. Didn’t look like it’s much. Body blow. All right? First round, cool. Second round, body blow, body blow. Third round, body blow. He’s not doing well. He’s getting beat. George Foreman is pummeling the champ, Muhammad Ali. Then, in the seventh round, eighth round, Ali on the ropes, look like he’s down, look like he’s out, looks as if he was will not prevail, begins to swing back, and the big behemoth George Foreman falls. And it’s rope-a-dope. Now, ain’t saying it’s a Pee-wee Herman moment meant to do that, but the thing is, is that we were delivering body blows. Colin Kaepernick, body blow. Social injustice in Ferguson, body blow. Police brutality with Eric Garner, body blow. And then George Floyd comes, and it’s a decisive moment. It is the sheer accumulation of anonymous events or famous ones that, in their sheer velocity, have now arrived at this moment. So, yes, it topples over, and it looks like it’s sudden, but it hasn’t been. It’s been a slow buildup. It’s been a steady increase. It’s been a steady diet of resistance that finally results in the toppling of this particular reality. So, there have been people on the ground doing their work, anonymous people, invisible people, voiceless people, who now claim voice, who now claim victory of a sorts. So, yes, it’s sudden in terms of its toppling, but not sudden in terms of the attack on the reality. So, Black Lives Matter suddenly looks as if they were doing the right thing. Colin Kaepernick suddenly looks, according to even the NFL, we were wrong. But it’s been a slow, steady buildup that now manifests itself in change. The change looks sudden. The change has been the accumulation of sustained resistance.

SREENIVASAN: Speaking of the NFL, Roger Goodell recently, in about an 81- second video, said that they were wrong. This was the day after several superstar players made a video. This was not with the concession or agreement or even knowledge of the owners of the league. Why do you think it came at that moment?

DYSON: Well, I think Roger Goodell understood that this was a seminal moment in the evolution of the society’s consciousness. And, as the most popular sport on the globe, supplied, its labor, by 70 percent, 69 percent, 70 percent black men, it’s time to act. People were critical of the coalition of Jay-Z with Roger Goodell. But, as far as I can tell, boy, has it worked, in this sense. The consciousness has been pushed. Colin Kaepernick doing his thing out there extremely important on the outside, Jay-Z on the inside leveraging his own authority, so that Colin and Jay together make a huge difference in the consciousness of figure like a Roger Goodell. And you have that kind of statement. And good for Roger Goodell, because many of those white billionaires who are good old boys could give less than a tinker’s damn about what’s going on. They may perform. Jerry Jones from the Dallas Cowboys threatens people that, if they kneel — how about now, Jerry? How about trying that now? It has shifted, the ground beneath them, so suddenly, because people are fed up and intolerant of intolerance.

SREENIVASAN: What are you hopeful for?

DYSON: I’m glad you asked me what I’m hopeful for, as opposed to optimistic, because the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said that optimism is a shallow virtue. It depends on what’s going on. Let me read the tea leaves. OK, I’m optimistic this will change. No, hope says, even when the skies are dark and gray, even when there’s nothing on the horizon, something will occur. We don’t know what it is, but we keep working, because we borrow our hope from the future as a down payment on change in the present. And so what I’m hopeful about that America will continue to change and grow. Now, it ain’t going to last at this level forever, maybe not for the next two weeks, but hopefully a sea change has occurred on the ground. The structures have been loosened a bit. The systems have been challenged a bit. And what we will be able to do is to move forward with concerted effort with all people involved to make sure that a change is going to come.

SREENIVASAN: Author, preacher professor of sociology at Georgetown Michael Eric Dyson, thanks so much for joining us.

DYSON: Thanks for having me.