Listen: Michael Eric Dyson's Interview on His Break With Cornel West [View all]

[JustAnotherGen]

http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2015/04/michael_eric_dyson_tells_the_root_about_his_split_with_mentor_cornel_west.html?wpisrc=

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“Something irrational is going on,” Dyson said, later adding, “It was the nastiness of the tone. The unprincipled assault. There’s a difference between that and ad hominem.”

West’s ever personal turn has “obscured the sometimes powerful and sometimes luminous and other times legitimate critique” he may have, according to Dyson.

“But when you weight it down under the burden of extraordinary, personal bitterness, it just wipes away all the good stuff that you might say and makes us question what it is about the motivation for your criticism in the long run,” he said.

Dyson is talking about both West’s critique of Obama and of the scholar’s attacks on Dyson and his peers, both older and younger, primarily Melissa Harris-Perry, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. West has called them all traitors of sorts, liars and opportunists who choose to toe the Obama administration line. This despite the fact that all have been critical of President Obama at one point or another, but have couched their criticism with respect for both the office and the place President Obama holds in the hearts of many African Americans.

West, who has compared himself to slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., has called them “false prophets,” leading with the idea that his voice is the only one ringing with any truth.

Yet, for Dyson, there is something very unlike MLK about this assessment.

Maybe now the folks who have come back here and been shocked at the derision from regular participants will get it now?