Michael Eric Dyson: Donald Trump is "what black people have warned America about"
Sociologist and best-selling author says Trump is no “aberration from whiteness” but its ultimate fulfillment
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
JUNE 18, 2018 11:00AM (UTC)
There is a lack of moral leadership in America. The country is like a wheel: racism, consumerism, celebrity-worship, violence at home and abroad, sexism, misogyny, anti-intellectualism, and extreme wealth and income inequality radiate are like the spokes radiating outward from the moral vacuum at its center. Donald Trump's election is one major effect of this moral crisis, but arguably not its cause.
How did this moral crisis come to be? How have racism and other forms of bigotry compromised the common good and social welfare of the United States? How does racism and white supremacy hurt white people? How do we explain the way evangelical Christians were so easily seduced by Donald Trump, a man who could be described as the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins? How do we correct America's lack of moral leadership, and stop or reverse Donald Trump's authoritarian political movement?
In an effort to answer these questions I spoke with Michael Eric Dyson. He is a professor of sociology at Georgetown University and the author of many books, including his most recent,"What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America" and "Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America." Dyson is also a regular guest on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher," as well as CNN, NPR and MSNBC.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. A longer version of this conversation can be heard on my podcast or through the link embedded below.
When you think about this moment in America, with President Donald Trump, did you ever think you would see such a thing transpire?
Not in such naked intensity, that a man of such manifest incompetence and Herculean ignorance would be at the helm of the ship of state. It’s pretty depressing. It’s pretty remarkable. But given the kind of person I am and the kind of people from whom I hail, I am forced to think about the consequences of all this that could be productive in an ironic way.
One of them is that people should understand that in many ways Donald Trump is the manifestation of what black people have warned America about in regard to whiteness for some 300 years. This is what racism looks like, this is how it happens, this is what it does to you. It’s incoherent often, it’s narcissistic, it’s self-preoccupied, it’s irrational, it comes at you in such gusts and waves of hostility that it’s hard to manage. It knocks you off-kilter, and you try to stand back off to fight it. This is what a lot of America is feeling in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidency. He’s not an aberration from whiteness, so to speak. He’s an extension of the logic of what that is, at its base.
more
https://www.salon.com/2018/06/18/michael-eric-dyson-donald-trump-is-what-black-people-have-warned-america-about/
= new reply since forum marked as read
?format=1000w
He puts his morals straight to work with hammer and nails and he went after a deadly disease few others would touch. I also think President Obama will prove to be more like him in time, after he gets settled in.
This author is spot-on about the sins of our society: racism, consumerism, celebrity-worship, violence at home and abroad, sexism, misogyny, anti-intellectualism, and extreme wealth and income inequality. How (or if) we decide to unwind ourselves from those moral defects will determine whether or not we survive.
.....
