Tears We Cannot Stop
Page 18
We will not surrender because your enduring and indestructible Word feeds the souls of our people.
We will not surrender because blackness is a gift that has blessed the world beyond compare. Our minds and hearts, and our tongues and bodies, too, have made Earth a better place to live. We will not surrender because we have survived.
Oh God, we are not naïve. We know, just as white America knows, that our legion, multiple, complicated, adaptable, triumphant blackness threatens whiteness.
Oh God, you placed a paradox in our midst like a rainbow at the end of a storm: if we are to understand America we must understand blackness.
Oh Lord, black folk are everything; we are every possibility of American, even human, identity made real. That means we are everywhere, just like our white brothers and sisters.
We are going nowhere. We are your children too. We will survive. We are America.
About the Author
Nina Subin
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON has been an ordained minister for thirty-five years, occupies the distinguished position of University Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and is a contributing editor for The New Republic and ESPN’s The Undefeated. Ebony magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential African Americans and one of the 150 most powerful blacks in the nation. Dr. Dyson is the author nineteen books, including four New York Times bestsellers.
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Also by Michael Eric Dyson
The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America (2016)
Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic, edited with Sohail Daulatzai (2010)
Can You Hear Me Now? The Inspiration, Wisdom, and Insight of Michael Eric Dyson (2009)
April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death and How It Changed America (2008)
Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop (2007)
Debating Race with Michael Eric Dyson (2007)
Pride: The Seven Deadly Sins (2006)
Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (2006)
Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? (2005)
Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves, and Demons of Marvin Gaye (2004)
The Michael Eric Dyson Reader (2004)
Open Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture, and Religion (2003)
Why I Love Black Women (2003)
Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur (2001)
I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. (2000)
Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line (1996)
Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture (1996)
Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X (1995)
Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism (1993)
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
I. Call to Worship
II. Hymns of Praise
III. Invocation
IV. Scripture Reading
V. Sermon
Repenting of Whiteness
1. Inventing Whiteness
2. The Five Stages of White Grief
3. The Plague of White Innocence
Being Black in America
4. Nigger
5. Our Own Worst Enemy?
6. Coptopia
VI. Benediction
VII. Offering Plate
VIII. Prelude to Service
IX. Closing Prayer
About the Author
Copyright
TEARS WE CANNOT STOP. Copyright © 2017 by Michael Eric Dyson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
www.stmartins.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for the print edition is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-250-13599-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-13600-8 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250136008
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First Edition: January 2017