Esteemed author, commentator and preacher Michael Dyson spoke virtually to ETSU faculty and students on April 7 in a talk titled “Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America.” The event was originally supposed to take place March 24 as part of Civility Week but was rescheduled.
During his talk, Dyson spoke of race, cancel culture and equality as well as his new book “Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America,” which focuses on facing the racial issues in America.
“When we think about where we are as a nation, we are facing at least two pandemics,” said Dyson. “The pandemic of the virus that has besieged the world in devastating fashion, the pandemic of race that continues to besiege us.”
Dyson also talked about the privileges that people have and what they–especially white people–take for granted in America.
“It is the people who look like they should be the most hopeless that are acting, the people who’s backs are against the wall are the ones pushing back, the people who look like they have no money, they don’t have any resources, they don’t have time, talent and yet they keep rising up and that should say something to us,” said Dyson.
“You have to use and spend some of the white privilege, you have to speak up as a white person and as Progressive and I know that is hard in East Tennessee,” said Dyson. “I know it’s tough because people think the world was born in a conservative cauldron, they think that their values are the only ones – many of them and they refuse to acknowledge the possibility that they could be wrong.”
The Civility Week Series was planned by the Student Government Association. To learn more about the series, visit the Civility page of the ETSU SGA website.
