The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

by Michael Eric Dyson

  At Carson-Newman, I experienced a growing desire to wed the life of the mind to the life of the heart. As an undergraduate, I was getting quite an introduction to the ministry in pastoring three different churches, and addressing the issues of life and death: I was preaching to my congregation, counseling them, and marrying and burying them. It was exciting, and at times quite stressful, but I increasingly sought a stronger academic vocabulary to express my intellectual goals and interests. Hence my sharpened focus on philosophy, social theory, literary criticism, and what would later be termed critical race theory. But I have never been one to think that religion dulled one’s cutting edge or critical capacities. Of course, if one is honest, there are some tremendous difficulties in maintaining one’s commitment to a religious tradition that says, “We know by faith and not by sight,” while maintaining habits of critical inquiry that rest on relentless interrogation of the warrants, grounds, bases, and assertions of truth put forth in all sorts of intellectual communities, including religious ones. So there are tensions and, in fact, these multiple tensions define my intellectual projects and existential identities: tensions between sacred and secular, tensions between the intellectual and the religious, tensions between radical politics and mainstream institutions, tensions between preaching and teaching, and so on. But I think they are useful, edifying tensions, tensions that help reshape my ongoing evolution as a thinker, writer, teacher, preacher, and activist.

  In many ways, I see myself as a rhetorical acrobat, navigating through varied communities of intellectual interest and pivoting around multiple centers of linguistic engagement, since all of these commitments have their own languages, rhetorics, and vocabularies. I view myself as a work in progress, an improvised expression of identity that is constantly evolving through stages and vistas of selfunderstanding. Such language owes several debts and has many sources, including my religious tradition’s plea to, as the James Cleveland song goes, “Please be patient with me, God is not through with me yet”; my musical roots in jazz, and now in hip-hop, where relentless improvisation and restless experimentation are artistic hallmarks; and postmodern philosophical ruminations on the fluidity of identity. Plus, openness to new experience is critical, but you can’t be so open that you lose sight of the crucial references, the haunting paths, the transforming traces, and the grounding marks of your identity. But one has got to constantly evolve and regenerate, stretching the boundaries of identity in a way that permits you to integrate new strains, new molds, new themes, and new ideas into the evolving self-awareness that occupies your heart and mind.

  When did you know, finally recognize that your star was rising? When did all this start to take shape for you, Michael?

  Good question. Throughout my college years, I struggled financially. Early on, I had to live in my car for almost a month because I didn’t have a place to live. My pastor would dig into his pocket to help me out. My father was able to give me a used station wagon after my raggedy old car died, but he had no money to give me. For the most part, I paid for my own education. I borrowed money and had loans that I only recently paid back because I was deep in debt as a result of supporting myself through college. I had to make it on my own, which wasn’t new since 1’d basically been living away from my parents’ home after starting boarding school at sixteen. I knew I’d come a long way when I got to Knoxville and, after working in a factory, I was able to get some acclaim for my preaching and began to pastor. But in my third church, I was booted out for attempting to ordain three women as deacons in the male supremacist black Baptist church, so I went back to school. I had, ironically enough, been kicked out of Carson-Newman because I refused to attend chapel, a mandatory assignment every Tuesday morning. I was protesting the dearth of black scholars and preachers who were invited to campus, especially after it was explained to me by an administrator that, based on the small number of blacks, one speaker a year was all we could expect.

  But after my church let me go—and isn’t this more than a little ironic, since it was named Thankful Baptist Church?—with a month’s severance pay, and with nowhere to land to support my family, since I had remarried and got temporary custody of my son, I headed back to Carson-Newman in 1983 to finish my studies. I received no scholarship money from the school, despite maintaining a straight-A average in philosophy, so I borrowed more money and graduated magna cum laude, and as outstanding graduate in philosophy, in 1985. I applied and got into Vanderbilt University’s Ph.D. department of philosophy, and into Brown and Princeton’s departments of religion. I was interested in Vanderbilt because of Robert Williams, a respected philosopher of black experience, and because I wanted to study with Alisdair MacIntyre, a renowned philosopher whose book After Virtue had recently made a huge splash in moral philosophy. I remember meeting with him on my visit to Vanderbilt, and I remember him asking me why anyone who had gotten into Princeton wanted to come to Vanderbilt to study. I told him I was wrestling with whether to become a philosopher with an interest in religion, or a scholar of religion who took philosophy seriously. His eyes lit up, and he uttered, “That’s precisely the question you must answer.”

  I decided on the latter course, and after visiting Brown and Princeton, I chose to attend Princeton. But there was a snag: Carson-Newman refused to release my final transcript to Princeton because I owed them money, a little more than $7,000, a sum that I knew wouldn’t exist if they had given me the scholarship help I thought I deserved. I was quite nervous until a dean at Princeton’s graduate school told me that I could come to Princeton without my final grades, since they had already accepted me on my documented performance. It was the closing of a widely gyrating circle of promise that had begun in the ghetto of Detroit where my teachers, my pastor, and some of my peers had foreseen, and in many cases, through their contributions, had assured my success. I realized at Princeton, as great a school as it is, that my being there was nothing less than what I should be doing in living out the early promise that they—my teachers, pastor, and peers—detected in me.

  As a second-year graduate student at Princeton in 1987, I began to write professionally, if by that it is meant that one is compensated for one’s work. I wrote for religious journals of opinion, for newspapers, for scholarly journals, and for mass-market magazines, much of this before completing my master’s degree in 1991 and my Ph.D. in 1993. In fact, I wrote the lead review essay in the New York Times Book Review, which ran longer than five thousand words, when they had such a feature in the book review back in 1992. I had begun to write book reviews for the New York Times in 1990, along with reviews for the Chicago Tribune book review. I wrote the “Black America” column for the left-wing Z Magazine in the late ’80s and early ’90s, which I inherited from Cornel West, and during this time, I also wrote op-eds for the Nation and later for the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other papers. I also wrote essays and chapters for several books. So I guess I took off pretty quickly after hitting graduate school, which, while not unique, I suppose was nonetheless rare enough. Interestingly enough, I ended up writing my first book, Reflecting Black, before I wrote my Ph.D. thesis. That fact encouraged me to complete my degree before my book was published in 1993. In fact, I received my Ph.D. from Princeton in June 1993, and my book was printed in late May 1993, and published later in June. I just made it!

  But weren’t there some highly unusual circumstances surrounding your dissertation, particularly the fashion in which you completed it? Rumor has it that your legend still lives at Princeton because of how you finished.

  Well, I don’t know if “legend” is quite the word; “infamy” may be more like it. The usual process of completing one’s dissertation is the submission to one’s doctoral committee of a prospectus, a document that details and outlines one’s proposed thesis, which can run up to twenty, thirty, or sometimes forty pages. After one is subject to a long, maybe three-hour, oral examination by one’s committee members, other professors, and one’s peers, one
is asked to step out of the room while the committee votes to accept or reject one’s prospectus. If it is accepted, often with recommendations for changes, you are then permitted to go about the business of working on the dissertation, which might take anywhere from two to ten years to complete. You then submit the thesis to your committee (which responds with challenges and changes that are integrated into your work), sit for a final oral examination, and, hopefully, your dissertation is approved.

  My committee included Cornel West, whose name I had submitted to a search committee to direct the Afro-American Studies program at Princeton before I left to run an antipoverty project and teach at Hartford Seminary in 1988; Jeffrey Stout, a well-respected religious ethicist, and the teacher with whom I spent the most time in the rigors of writing and rewriting papers, taking courses, and critically reading challenging books; and Albert Raboteau, the well-regarded religious historian and author of the classic work Slave Religion. Well, I submitted my prospectus in April 1993, and after a three-hour public oral examination, consisting of close questioning by my committee members and a few others in attendance, I was asked to leave the room. Upon being invited back in and taking my seat at the head of the examining table, I was informed that I had passed and that my prospectus had been approved.

  Needless to say, I was quite happy, but for more than the usual reasons of having one’s intellectual work approved by one’s teachers. I had an even bigger investment than usual because of a big risk I had taken. As my teachers, and the others in attendance, verbally congratulated me from where they sat, I reached under the table and pulled out my completed dissertation, handed copies to my committee members, and said, “Here it is.” It is true that that was an electrifying moment. There was a collective gasp that was articulated, an “ah” that reverberated through the room, with some of the folk, including members of my committee, clearly stunned. I realized that it was a big risk to do what I had done. After all, they could have rejected my prospectus or asked for huge changes that would have necessitated significant revision of my work. Fortunately, it was approved, and after I submitted my thesis, I responded to the criticisms, integrated them into the final version of my dissertation, sat for my final oral examination, and was awarded my doctoral degree. And it is true that after my prospectus performance, some of my colleagues cornered me and said, “Day-am,” in the black vernacular, “that was unbelievable.” And when I came back to defend my dissertation in my final oral examination, some of my peers said that I had become a legend in the department. I’m just glad that things turned out the way they did.

  But your legend doesn’t stop there. You also had a meteoric rise in academe for one so young. Didn’t you get your Ph.D. in 1993, and in the very next year, you received tenure at Brown, also an Ivy League university, and became a full professor at the University of North Carolina? That’s almost unheard of in conservative academic circles, where promotion through the ranks often takes years and years.

  Yes, that’s true. I had been pretty much teaching full time since 1989, when I left Hartford Seminary to become an instructor of ethics, philosophy, and cultural criticism at Chicago Theological Seminary. I taught at CTS for three years, two as an instructor, and when I completed my master’s degree in 1991, I got promoted to an assistant professor. I left CTS in 1992 to become an assistant professor of American civilization and Afro-American studies at Brown. In 1993, as you know, I received my Ph.D. from Princeton, and my first book, Reflecting Black, was published and received favorable critical attention from both the academy and the broader public, and I was offered several teaching positions, including offers from Northwestern and Chapel Hill. Because of those offers, Brown sped up my tenure decision by about six years, since one normally receives tenure in one’s seventh year.

  I was extremely gratified to be awarded tenure at Brown and, as it turns out, at Chapel Hill. (Northwestern offered me tenure too, but the president intervened and told me I could come to the university and essentially “try out” for two years; and if after that time I fulfilled my promise, then I would be awarded tenure. He based his decision, he said, on the fact that he had never known a scholar to be awarded tenure less than a year after he completed his Ph.D., with one exception—a scholar who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in economics. I shot back that, first, no one knew at the time the scholar was awarded tenure that he would receive the Nobel Prize, so the decision to grant him tenure was, by those terms at least, a risk, and second, since the president couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t achieve equal prominence in my field, it made no sense to deny me tenure either. Needless to say, I rejected Northwestern’s offer.) Chapel Hill made the extraordinary step of offering me tenure and a full professorship, in light of the fact that I had completed my next book, which would be published shortly, a study of Malcolm X.

  Wait. If it normally takes seven years to get tenure in the first place, it must take at least another seven years, if not longer, to become a full professor, right?

  Well, it certainly can. After seven years, a scholar who successfully obtains tenure is usually made an associate professor. When you write the next book or two, depending on where you teach, you can be granted full professorship. And that may take seven to ten years, or in some cases not quite as long, and in other cases, significantly longer. So yes, it’s safe to say that I was fortunate enough to do in a year what can in other circumstances take as long as seventeen to more than twenty years to achieve. In a way, I have been driven by the sense that I have to make up for lost tune, which, ironically enough, has put me ahead of the pace of some of my peers. Plus, I felt a sense of responsibility to my peers from my old neighborhood who will never be able to achieve at the levels I have enjoyed, not because they aren’t talented, but because they lack opportunity. Or, on my block, most of them are either in prison or dead. I felt blessed by God, and I didn’t want to blow it. Plus, a lot of the early writing and speaking I did—which, as it turns out, helped me to climb the academic ladder rapidly—was not only driven by a sense of vocation, but was done as well in the desperate attempt to raise funds for my brother Everett’s defense against the charge, and later the conviction, of seconddegree murder. Almost the month after I landed in Chicago to teach at CTS, Everett was accused of murdering a young black man in Detroit. I believe he is innocent, and I have expended quite a few resources in trying to prove his innocence, and to free him from prison. He’s been there now for eight years. That has given me great incentive to work as hard as I can, and of course, I’m sure there’s a good bit of survivor guilt involved as well.

  Have you ever talked with John Edgar Wideman? He crossed my mind; as you know, he’s had a similar circumstance with his brother.

  We’ve talked, but not about our brothers. Yes, he too has had to deal with that strange and haunting reality that often morphs into a tragic trope of black existence: one brother a prisoner, the other a professor. One of you free to move, the other one caged like an animal. The effect of that thought on one’s psyche is like an enormous downward gravitational pull. But I’m grateful to God for the ability to be able to do what I do, because I know it’s a tremendous gift and pleasure and leisure to be able to write and think. And I work hard, traveling around the country giving lectures, speeches, and sermons, writing books, articles, and essays, just trying, as the hip-hoppers say, “to represent.” So I spend long hours at what I do, but I’m not complaining. I’m a well-paid, highly visible black public intellectual who is grateful for what God has done for him and who wants to pass it on to somebody else. I don’t want to keep it for myself. I want to make sure that other people get a chance to express their talents and their visions. I have no desire to be the H.N.I.C., or the “Head Nigger In Charge.”

  Do you get a sense of that . . . when you are in your flow . . . do you know the impact you’re having on a room?

  That’s a good question. Let’s not have any false modesty: I’m a public speaker and I’ve been trained from a very young age in the art of
verbal articulation. I’ve been seasoned to engage at the highest level of oral expression. So, I’m experienced enough to know when I’m hitting my target and when I’m missing it. There are times when I can feel the electricity of getting things right, because I’ve known when I failed [laughs]. I know what that feels like. And even when other people think I’ve done well, I often feel a great need for improvement. There have been very few times when I feel like I absolutely nailed it. There are some moments when I know I’m “representin’” because I know I’m a vehicle. I’m a vessel. My religion teaches me that the gift is not in the vehicle, but in the giver of the gift. I honestly hope to be an instrument of the Lord. I hope that I’m an instrument of God. And I hope, therefore, that I work hard to stimulate the gift God gave me. I’m constantly striving to get better, to get clearer, sharper, and more eloquent. I think one of the ways that occurs is through testing ourselves in situations where people are unpersuaded by our beliefs and we have to make a case for them with as much passion and precision as possible. Crossing swords rhetorically is a great joy to me, and often a great learning experience.