Dr. Dyson starts his usual complaining about American life
by recounting a bad memory. He was doing a stint at Connecticut’s Hartford
Seminary, when he got pulled over by a rude (and probably racist) cop. The
reason – someone saw him spanking his kid and thought it was child abuse - so
she called cops. They order him out of the car, they’re domineering, they’re
hostile, they shove him as they walk away. As for the ten-year-old son, he ends
up crying. This is what always bothers me about Dyson, he just can’t seem to
take responsibility when he does something wrong. He’s tough enough to give his
son “a few licks on the hand” but is he tough enough to take a few licks of his
own? He uses physical punishment on his (probably smaller) son for some
perceived misbehavior, but what about when the cops punish HIM for a perceived
misbehavior?
There are some
anecdotes that get you thinking, like the one where his kids are called
“nigger” at a Chicago skating rink, same thing at a swimming pool in Kissimmee,
Florida. A cute, blonde blue-eyed kid, no older than his children, calls them
racist names, casually, and dismissively. I would love to know what motivated
the White kids to say those things. Did their parents use that kind of language
at home? What about their teachers at school? Would they dismissively address a
Black hospital employee as a nigger if they needed medical help?
Dyson recounts how
he left Carson-Newman college before his senior year, over a financial and
personal dispute. He makes it look like a protest, but I can see right through
it – he left because he couldn’t have his way. He got into a personality
conflict with the college’s White president, a man who had no PhD and was
therefore not qualified. But what about all the Black high school principals
who are not qualified? They’re out there right now, screwing over Black kids,
nothing but puppets for the White establishment, or kicking up to the White
elites in order to stay in power. There are more corrupt, dishonest,
unqualified, and incompetent high school principals ruining Black children’s
lives than there are unqualified college presidents. Where’s Dyson’s rant
against it?
It was interesting
to read the chapter Inventing Whiteness,
where he discusses how the Poles, Jews, Irish, and Italians, all became “white”
partly out of their own initiative, and partly out of the way they were
perceived (also discussed in an earlier book titled How the Irish Became White.) It’s his belief that all of these
ethnic groups took advantage of the “white” label in order to get ahead, both
at the expense of Black Americans, and at the expense of losing their own
ethnic identity. In one example he uses O.J. Simpson (a man he thoroughly
dislikes) as having bought into the White world, then switched back to being
Black just for the convenience. Dyson says that prior to murdering his ex-wife,
nothing was Black about O.J. except for the bottom of his shoe. No secret is
made about how many Black Americans did in fact think he was guilty, but it was
the anger of the people that drove them to support him. Despite his dislike for
O.J, he credits the trial with giving Whites a taste of the absurdities that
Black Americans face.
Other Black-White
issues are discussed, like White rappers who hijack (or mimic) Black American
culture. Dyson credits Justin Timberlake for his use of hip-hop rhythms, while
being wary of the singer using it to his convenience. But he seriously
dislike’s Iggy Azalia’s appropriation of hip-hop, treating her like she hijacked
it. He doesn’t have anything bad to say about Eminem. Dyson has respect for
Eminem’s ability, but I also suspect that it’s because Eminem kind of “paid his
dues,” growing up a poor kid in Detroit, no White privilege there. On the other
hand, I always saw Eminem as an incredible opportunist, because you can’t claim
“street cred” when you’re living in an upscale neighborhood. Then again, most
hip-hop artists exploit violence in the Black community, while at the same time
living in exclusive White suburban mansions (there’s the O.J. Simpson
experience again.) Maybe it’s time for Dr. Dyson to write about that too?
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