Barack Obama’s political rhetoric gives the nation great hope, and black people must take full advantage of whatever possibilities might fall out from his possible ascent, author and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson said at the University of Missouri-St. Louis on Friday.
Wearing a chocolate-colored suit, Dyson swaggered to the podium and launched an hour-long speech on what Obama’s potential presidency should mean for black radicals.
He told people attending the Black Radical Congress’ 10th Anniversary Conference that it’s not only what Obama could do politically, but the possibilities that will result from his presidency that matter. He represents the possibility of changing the nation and the American psyche.
“Obama’s importance will be largely symbolic, in the sense that when young black kids say, ‘If he can be president, I can be a nuclear physicist or I can be a social scientist,” Dyson said. “It’s not what he can do politically, it is what possibilities open up in the mind.”
The politics of race when it comes to Obama are complicated, Dyson said. His historic quest for the presidency sheds light on America’s race problems and positions them in a way that affects not only African Americans, but all Americans.
Dyson said a black president won’t be able to end racism and bigotry, and he won’t be the president for black people alone, but the president of the United States.
“We also know that if Barack Obama is elected president, it’s not much that he’s really going to be able to do,” Dyson said. “Rich black folk got treated the same way as poor black folk.”
Therefore, Dyson urged blacks to take individual action at the state and local levels. He said blacks must prepare for the kind of resentment and retrenchment that may happen at those levels if a black person becomes president.
“You got the national face that’s black, but you got the local face that’s going to be painfully and obviously anti-black,” Dyson said. “Politics are still real. State rights are still real. The resentment comes at the state and the local level.”
In a practical sense, Dyson said blacks must use Obama’s presidency to push to get other blacks elected to political office. All black politicians can stand under the umbrella of an Obama victory, he said.
“Don’t be too critical as a black radical so that you get marginalized by your own inaction and your own cynicism,” Dyson said.
A serious social critic and self-described hip-hop scholar, the 49-year-old Baptist minister is not one to censor himself at the expense of revealing truths.
He rejects treating highbrow and lowbrow subjects with different standards, and treats even those he admires, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with rigor and skepticism.
“I even challenge the people I love,” said Dyson, who recently gave a critique of Obama’s Father’s Day Speech in Time Magazine.
Dyson usually reveals little about his life, but he said his experiences have undoubtedly shaped his ability to relate to intellectuals and lower-class blacks alike.
He grew up in Detroit, was a teen father, lived on welfare for three years and has a brother serving life in prison for second-degree murder. He received his bachelor’s degree from Carson-Newman College in 1982, and his master’s degree and Ph.D. from Princeton University.
He arrived on the intellectual scene in the early 1990s and won acclaim for his books on hip-hop music and his critique of Bill Cosby’s controversial comments about poor blacks.
In his latest book, April 4, 1968, Dyson explores advancements that have been made since King was assassinated on that date in Memphis. In a column on blackamericanweb.com, Dyson said Obama has a real chance to embody the “stable, principled black political leadership that King envisioned.”
He told people at Friday’s Black Radical Congress conference that while it’s okay to be critical of Obama, black people must also “invest so deeply in the belief that a black face in politics is going to make a difference.”