Professor Michael Eric Dyson was named one of Ebony magazine's most influential African Americans in 2003. He is an outspoken political commentator on national television and used to host “The Michael Eric Dyson Radio Show” on National Public Radio. An author of numerous books, Dyson is currently a sociology professor at Georgetown University. He sat down with THE HOYA to discuss the future of race relations, the current election and other social issues affecting the nation.

What is your opinion on race relations on Georgetown’s campus? Do you think the university is doing enough to recruit minority
students?

I think race relations at Georgetown, like anywhere in America, are in flux. It depends on who’s here at any particular point in time. It depends upon the quality of interactions between racial groups and among racial groups and it depends upon vision and insight of the people participating in the broader dialogue of racial and ethnic difference, similarity and identity.

Detroit, Milwaukee and many other large urban centers struggle with high levels of crime, poverty and racial inequality. What do you think causes these problems in large urban cities? What is a solution?

I think that first of all, concentrated poverty is an enormous problem, when you talk about Milwaukee and Detroit you’re talking about “concentrated poverty effects”- the ongoing and cumulative product of people being bunched together in smaller spaces, relatively speaking, living together in segregated areas of communities that are relatively depleted and devoid of social services and social support … People living in projects and slums and ghettos where they are living on top of each other literally and symbolically leads to a great deal of tension.

Thirdly, the poverty is so devastating, it doesn't take a genius to realize an empirical relationship between lack of economic and social resources and the consequent social distress and chaos that issues forth in crime. People who don't have will take. People who are deprived will steal. People who are undereducated and miseducated will do self-destructive things that will have negative consequences on broader society.

What is your opinion on the current state of hip-hop and its degrading treatment toward women?

There is little defense, if any, for its degrading emphasis in hip-hop culture. I love hip-hop as an art form. I think it has done incredible good, especially for young black men that are seeking upward mobility, entrepreneurial expansion, capital floors and the ability to turn craft into commerce, but often at the expense of young women.

At the same time, hip-hop has been deeply and profoundly commercialized — what we used to know as a vibrant, vital, independent culture has now been mass produced and sold on the open market place to the highest bidder ... and it has been emptied in some cases of its essential soul.

So now there are always underground pockets of tremendous cultural creativity. But this state of affairs leads Nas, one of the greatest rappers, to say, “Hip-hop is dead,” but he meant it metaphorically because he announced the death of hip-hop on a hip-hop album. So at least, varieties of hip-hop are and should be dead, other varieties should experience a renaissance and others should be revived.

What can we take from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy that can be used to fix Americans’ current problems?

Dr. King told the truth about poverty, invisibility and vulnerability of the poor. He struggled against the odds to express a prophetic American gospel that dipped into the cooling waters of black culture, but that spread its wisdom far from its shores. He was brave and courageous because he went up against the American government. He talked about America being the greatest purveyor of violence in the world … And he did so at great risk. Many black people who supported him said, “You’re wrong for speaking out against the war in Vietnam because you’re linking war and the civil rights movement and you’re going to alienate a president like Lyndon B. Johnson who was very kind to black people.”

Today, there are six senators of color and 16 women senators whose respective groups make up 70 percent of the population, but have only 22 Senate seats. How do we address this problem of lack of representation?

...We've got to demand as this coalition that more of our collective voices and faces be represented. Now we know that not all women, some of whom are women of color, mainstream women and minorities, will agree on different issues. We will have differences among ourselves. Latinos and African Americans experience tension that has to be acknowledged. But at the same time, I think the growing coloring of America and the census indicating that in the next 20 to 30 years, white America will be a minority and people of color will be a majority, we could have a situation where we have a majority of people as people of color but yet a disproportionate amount of power is still held on to by white brothers and sisters.

And so power-sharing has not been the mark of political democracy by white Americans in this country. We can't even get a quarter of white Democrats to think more positively about black people, as a poll that came out three weeks ago suggested. A third of those white Democrats have negative opinions of black people and a fourth may not even vote for Senator Obama. And these are Democrats, and he is the nominee of his party!

Barack Obama in many ways has transcended becoming the “black” candidate. What qualities have allowed him to make this transition?
He has been effectively portrayed as the candidate who has transcended race and he certainly is not the typical black candidate. Those two things are not the same thing. You could be atypical and still not have transcended race. I'm not sure that transcending race is as important as transcending racism. I don't want to transcend my blackness, I just what to transcend the bigoted viewpoints that people have of what it means to be a black man in America.

Barack Obama has been extremely competent and capable as a politician that has won him legions of admirers. He has done it the old fashioned way: through hard work and luck and through a combination of the two. His extreme charisma in alliance with his talents and his unique story, you'll have to go to central casting to find a guy like that: biracial, mother white, daddy African, good-looking, beautiful wife, and beautiful family with some Hawaiian and Indonesian experiences … you couldn't invent a more stellar figure who embodies the hopes and aspirations of millions of Americans across racial divisions who see in Barack Obama the manifestations of their hopes and ideals.

Many African Americans’ hopes and aspirations are riding on this election. If Obama fails to win, how will this affect future race relations in America?

It will be hard. Obviously we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket. But this is a big basket, and if not all of our eggs, a bunch of them are there. It won't be the end of the world but it will be a sad day in America. It won't just be a sad day for black people; it will be a sad day for all Americans because the best qualified guy could not be voted in because of his color.

At the end of the day, if Barack Obama doesn't become president at this point in time, it is a clear indication that Americans can't get past these racial divisions that they have lauded him for transcending. If he's transcended them, then why can't you? If he can get beyond them at great expense by the way to even the people who look like him, then why can't the rest of America do the same and follow suit?

It will be a sad day not just for black people but for America, because we have failed to honor our best, endorse our highest, and stand by our most intelligent. No disrespect to John McCain, who is a worthy American hero. If Barack Obama was a white man he would have been up by 15 points in the polls.

What are your future plans?

...I'm unabashedly trying to make the life of the mind “sexy” because I think it’s important for young people to see role models of vigorous intellectual engagement in ways that have relevance to their lives and that’s what I want to continue to do.

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