Tears we cannot stop : a sermon to white America

Resource Information

The work Tears we cannot stop : a sermon to white America represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Waubonsee Community College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Tears we cannot stop : a sermon to white America

Title remainder

a sermon to white America

Statement of responsibility

Michael Eric Dyson

Creator

• Dyson, Michael Eric

Author

• Dyson, Michael Eric

Subject

• Race discrimination
• Race discrimination -- United States
• Race relations
• Race relations -- Religious aspects | Christianity
• Race relations -- Religious aspects | Christianity
• Racism
• African Americans -- Race identity
• United States
• United States -- Race relations
• Whites -- Attitudes
• Whites -- Race identity
• Whites -- Race identity -- United States
• Whites -- United States -- Attitudes
• Racism -- United States
• African Americans -- Race identity

Language

eng

Summary

"In the wake of yet another set of police killings of black men, Michael Eric Dyson wrote a tell-it-straight, no holds barred piece for the NYT on Sunday July 7: Death in Black and White (It was updated within a day to acknowledge the killing of police officers in Dallas). The response has been overwhelming. Beyoncé and Isabel Wilkerson tweeted it, JJ Abrams, among many other prominent people, wrote him a long fan letter. The NYT closed the comments section after 2,500 responses, and Dyson has been on NPR, BBC, and CNN non-stop since then. Fifty years ago Malcolm X told a white woman who asked what she could do for the cause: Nothing. Dyson believes he was wrong. In Tears We Cannot Stop, he responds to that question. If we are to make real racial progress, we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed or discounted. As Dyson writes: At birth you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead...The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know...You think we have been handed everything because we fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it--all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace--should be yours first and foremost, and if there's anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully"--Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

305.800973

Index

no index present

LC call number

E185.615

LC item number

.D976 2017

Literary form

non fiction