INTERVIEW: Michael Eric Dyson Compares Kamala To Drake, Talks Intellectual Rappers, Fighting For The Vote + More

So they invented this militia called the Red Shirts, and they were riding rough shot over black people, doing illegal stuff to suppress the vote, you know, scaring them, intimidating them. And they said, I want to read this to you because this is rather remarkable. I don't want bore people, but this is what a copy of their plan was circulated over state. This is what it says. Every Democrat must feel honored by excuse me, to control the vote

at least one negro. Never threaten a man individually. If he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the times required that he should die. A dead radical is very harmless a threatened radical is often troublesome, sometimes dangerous, and always vindictive. So they were doing their thing, and then the Democratic candidate for governor, Wade Hampton, had these people out in force, and they had rifle clubs aimed at trying to suppress the Black vote. So January sixth did

not start it. It's part and parcel of what we have done as a government in America. And unbeknownst to a lot of people, January six ain't no outlier unless you say the outlining and not telling the truth about what's going on in American politics.

all were on the front line raising those questions. Other people were doing it more than nefariously behind the scenes, ostensibly supporting, but all the time stabbing you with the knife. Joe Biden I think could have still won. It would have been much closer. It had been a much tighter race house. And ever, as James Brown would say, there is no doubt that the shifting energy to Kamala Harris is remarkable. Let's be real, it's got a surprise. Kamala Harris.

You ever done something you go like, damn, I ain't know. I didn't know I was gonna come like that. Nobody could have predicted it. You know what they were predicting White women ain't gonna stand up for that black woman because white women were voting disproportionately in their numbers for Donald Trump the last time around. They didn't support Hillary to the degree that they should have anyway. So what makes us think that they're gonna support this black woman

from California? Well, lo and behold they is and Republican women are out there doing their things. I hope it's a reverse Tom Bradley effect, you know, the Tom Bradley effect and named after the governor of California, which meant white people would say, oh, yes, we'll vote for the negro work I got to support him, and then going to booth and then boom, vote for the white guy.

I think the reverse might happen this time around, that white women might tell their husbands and other interested parties, yes, yes I'm a Trumper, and then going there and support common Mala Harris. Why because she's reasonable, Why because she's intelligent, Why because she's self possessed, she's not off the hinge as Trump is, and she continues to escalate a war against the lunacy that is Donald Trump. So it is astonishing, it's amazing. I've known Vice President Harris for some twenty

odd years. She's been a woman of integrity, she's been a woman of serious regard for the people, and she's been willing to take on some complicated stuff. I know a lot of people are trying to portray her as you know, tough on crime and so on and so forth. You what amazes me about that black people be the first people called the police anyway, right, And I mean you be there, like Mama, I told you that sandwich wasn't right. I'm calling the cops on you. So obviously

I'm being facetious, y'all. But the point is that does.

you doing whatever that's undermining our communities. You know, when I was I think ros Baroka, the mayor of Newark, said some of that defund the police stuff was from bourgeoise negroes who don't live in these hoods now, whether you take that or not, because I'm for a progressive realization of police being held to account. As Tyreek Hill, I think he's with us now. The point is at the same time that there are real concerns and issues of crime that she tried to address in very practical

and progressive fashion, and we need to acknowledge that. But I think the energy with her is remarkable. It's astonishing, and more power to her. I hope she continues to grow in strength and numbers as we go on.

election because of a lot of their recent rulings. And when you look at the fact that you know, you'll have so many people across the country who might refuse to certify the result of the election right right.

not gonna have an election. You know, we're not gonna you know, it's too close to election. We're not gonna do this is ten months before we're gonna hold Merrit Garland and let the next president decide. Donald Trump wins, he gets in his people on what Gorsag, Kavanaugh and Amy Cony Barrett right, they have shifted profoundly to the right. A court that was meant, as you said, to be a check and balance and democracy. You got the executive branch,

the president and stuff. You got the legislative people in Congress and the Senate, and you got the Supreme Court, and they're all supposed to be held in check. But when the Supreme Court is in cahoots with the President of the United States of America, who happens to be an anti democracy figure, who is inspiring an insurrection in America. The very avatar symbol of what's supposed to be democracy itself is himself purging you know, voters. More importantly, democracy

by his own actions is astonishing. So it is a question as to whether or not the Supreme Court should be reformed. Now, you know, President Biden put forth these rules, you know, but they to regulate themselves. The you know,

what did Malcolm X say? The chickens are being now presided over by the foxes, So we can't you know, you know, Clarence Thomas, a white supremacist and black skin, a man who has been so unprincipled, and his wife and the wife of another Supreme Court Justice Alito, running your flag upside down, you are signifying to us that you are complicitus with the very forces that you should

be opposing. So it is a problem. But I say, the answer then is not less voting, but more because if we change the constitution, not of the United States of America, but of the court of the voter, if we get a person in like Kamala Harris and Tim Wallas, and they are able to restore some sense of integrity and appreciation and confidence in our government that goes a long way towards trying to remedy some of these more systemic and structural problems.

is it's tricky. We don't know what's real. The deep fakes, you know, people out here saying one thing and meaning another or lying about it even before AI think about it, the robo calls that were being out put out here. You know, voting is on Wednesday. Now you know we don't vote on Wednesday, next Saturday. To vote early to the you know souls to the polls and churches is problematic,

and so on and so forth. So you've got the distillation and the dial of all kinds of fake news and fake information, which is why behooves us to listen to the breakfast Club, why behooves us to read the New York Times, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, whatever your paper of choice is, and to make sure you can fact check, because if you've got again, and I hate to just beat this dead horse, but you've got a president who is the font of fake news, of defactualization,

a factfulness gone awry. This dude don't know a fact. If it hit him in the head, he lies, and then he lies again, and people lie and lie again and create that as the basis of facts. Then you've got Senators like Hawley and Congressmen like Jordan out here reinforcing the negativity that's generated by the falseness of it.

So you got misinformation, which is I didn't mean to get it wrong, but I messed up disinformation said, I meant to get it wrong, and I'm trying to lie to you so I can convince you to do something that is against your best interests. So disinformation and misinformation are bet enough. So we got to continue to do the old fashioned way. Read it for yourself, find it

in a newspaper, check it against facts of history. Begin to talk to people that you trust, talk to people who you know whose job it is to think about these things. And no disrespect to celebrities, but man, oh man, in our community especially, we're vulnerable. You know, you get a celebrity, gets mad, gets upset, talks about things. And I love my man Tyrese. He was just off base when what he was saying. I love his energy, I

love the sincerity with which he said it. I know his intent was right, but sometimes you could just be spreading misinformation that ain't helpful to us as the people so read. And this is why I know the sound self serving as a black intellectual. But I'm sixty five years old. I've been out here on this battlefield for forty years, and I'm telling you I'm trying to make the life of the mind sexy. To young people. I want them to see you ain't just got to be

a rapper, which is important. You ain't just got to be an entertainer, which is great. You ain't got to be a singer, You ain't got to be an athlete. You could be an intellectual, a thinker, a person who puts on every day a thinking cap and tries to

reflect upon the world. There's something virtuous about that, and I'm unapologetic about that because I think we need more of that now in an era when disinformation ai, the creation of deep fakes, and the perpetuation of legacies of inequity through means to dominate the masses has to be examined. So we got to go back to old school, think about Noam Chomsky and manufacturing consent, and think about these great books Marshall mclewin in terms of talking about the

media and the medium is the message. That's the kind of stuff we got to think critically about as we move forward.

we're on trial. So from the very beginning, he was trained about being skeptical and suspicious of the dominant society. When you think about a Killer Mike, a Loupe Fiasco, you know people that I've talked to constantly. When you think about a Jay, when you think about a Nas. These are highly intellectual reflections and reflectors on society. And we appeal to them precisely because they teach us to think for ourselves and to be open minded.

to account. Y'all know this old story that a Philip Randolph and Mary MacLeod Bethune a visiting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the White House, right, and they were part of his kitchen and cabinet. This is like back in the forties, and they're telling him you got to do this. You got to create the possibility for black people to vote. You've got to we have to do everything we can to make sure that the military is, you know, desegregated.

He says, everything you were doing and saying I agree with and now go out in the streets and make me do it right. Harry Belafonte used to love telling that story. So the thing is, you got to make people hold them to account. Martin Luther King Junior on the outside putting pressure on LBJ allows LBJ to collar some of those people in the Senate and say, you're gonna vote the right way, and we're gonna do what we kind of do to pass what the Voting Rights Ack.

But before that, the Civil Rights Bill, right, civil Rights Ack. And then look at the Holy Trinity sixty four, the Civil Rights Act, sixty five, the Voting Rights Ack, and in sixty eight, in homage the doctor King after his death, the Fair Housing Act. That's the Holy Trinity. That's the triumphant trilogy of transformation for Black folk in this country, politically and legislatively. So you got to hold these people

to account. If it wasn't for the pressure of King, then LBJ wouldn't have done what he did, couldn't have done what he did. If it wasn't for Frederick Douglas, then Lincoln might not have acted the way he did. And we ain't talking about perfect people. You know, when people always cite the history of some of these people, Joe Biden or Lincoln, I don't give a dang what Lincoln's motivation was. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation. And when

he signed that Emancipation Proclamation, that opened up possibility. So we have to stop demanding perfection even as we hold people to account. And I think it is important to hold people to account. But what's interesting to me is that when I hear all that about holding to account, I ain't seeing nobody who's promoting Donald Trump saying let me do it skeptically, let me be self critical about

mister Trump. Yes, I think that in their quoting going back fifty years to find something about Joe Biden, this dude was promoting the death of the Central Park five now known as the Exonerated five not long ago, and ain't apologized yet or backtrack upon demanding the death penalty for them. Here's a guy who would his father denied people access to housing when he owned these cribs in these apartments in New York. Here's a guy who has been consistent. Now, I think rappers get it twisted because

he was an icon of hip hop before. Why because he had the women he had they talk, They thought he had the money. You can see he was lying. They thought he had the buildings and the money, and he was a billionaire and all that. So that was attractive to a kind of glitzy hip hop era where it was all about the pursuit of capital. But Donald Trump was faking the funk even then. His daddy gave

him four four hundred million to begin with. If your father gave you four hundred million to begin with as a little loan to hook you up and you still struggling the way you're doing, you are of a failure. So even at that level, they're problematic issues. I hear young rappers saying, but he gave us a check. No, they talking about during COVID the twelve hundred dollars or

whatever they got two thousand check the record. That's the legislative branch, that is Congress stuff that he opposed, and then he took credit for distributing Joe Biden done hooked up a lot of people in terms of student loan. I know three or four people have been forgiven one hundred thousand or more. So the point is, check the record, stop the disinformation, stop the misinformation, stop the deep fakes, and ask serious questions. You must always hold people to account,

hold me to account, hold y'all to account. But do it in a in a in a I think respectful fashion. The thing that I have a problem with I'm I'm on Twitter or what it acts and people calling me out my name. You know, I'm trying to check as the people I know undercover. Maybe it's my mother, Okay, no, it's not her. So the thing is is that you know, you can hold me to account, you can challenge me, but I'm twenty seven books in the game, mofo. I've

done my work. It doesn't mean that you have to agree with what I say, but be respectful for what I do and acknowledge that. And so On Twitter, you know, we have these Twitter you know, battles, and we got these digital warriors who are talking trash and being nasty and calling your names. Do we have to do that? Can we respect the integrity of each other and say we're in a pitched battle where trying to figure out the best way to go, and let's treat each other with fundamental love and respect.

the the the erosion of JD. Vance over the last three or four years. You know, not only are you being supported by Peter Till and you know your whole uh senatorial career is old to one guy uh in Silicon Valley who believes in you and your right wing agenda. And you're deeply and profoundly the nativest xenophobic belief and passion merrit as you are to an Indian woman in America and initially you were saying, oh, yeah, she's not white.

But why are you apologizing for your wife, bro, Because the side you're on is so racist that you have to then make an exception for the inclusion of your wife. That ought to tell you something. JD. Vance is a despicable reflection of cow towing and capitulating to a foolish fascist like Donald Trump, and his ability to be an echo chamber as opposed to a critical voice is disparaiting. But we are to call him for what he is, and he is joined with the enemy of the state.

He has joined with an enemy of democracy, and we are to call him out for it.

We'll say you have to be property owning. Now that excludes a whole bunch of white people too, white men. But we can keep it elite. We can keep it a nice little club that we control, because we don't want the unwashed masses to be able to determine and dictate what goes on in America. So initially, what did they do. They punted it. The federal government said, let's give it to the states. Right. Whoever is, you know

in New Jersey, they can decide what they're doing. Who's in you know, Massachusetts, they can decide what they're doing. Who's in South Carolina, they can decide what they're doing. So they punted it to the states. And then you've heard of this thing called states rights. Right. That was a big thing during the Civil rights movement at its height, because they were saying, it's the state's rights. Forget the federal government telling us what we can and cannot do,

imposing constraints upon us. You know, when George Wallace, the governor of Alabama stood in the door and kept those negroes from entering the University of Alabama. Forget the federal government, it's the state, and Alabama says they cannot come in. So that's what's set up by the federal government because they said the founding fithers, we don't want us dictating and determining what goes on in these states. For instance, in New Jersey, women could vote. Initially, right, that was

the only state that allowed women to vote. They were first referring to they, which is not you know, neutral, Then they said he or she, which is pretty progressive when you think about women voting. But then decades later they even rejected the possibility of women voting in Jersey. In some states, black people could vote, then they couldn't vote. So there was a hodgepodge and a mismash mismash of you know, constitutional declarations independently of these states that allowed

them to have wildly varying degrees of support overall. In all, the founding Fablers weren't the kind of you know, rich, richly supportive democrats, small d that were able to say we want everybody to be able to vote, and that kind of misunderstanding. It's just like when when I hear conservatives say, well, we're a Christian nation, No we ain't. Bro South Africa is one of the rare ones that claims to be explicitly a Christian nation. You see how

that turned out. So when they say this is a Christian nation, Thomas Jefferson ain't believing in the Bible the same way you do Ralph Reid or Jerry Folwell, it's a different Bible. The first thing Thomas Jefferson did when he got the Bible he cut all the miracles out because he wanted to be empirical. He left Smokey Robinson though, okay anyway, so not to not to not come on, man, come on with it. So he cut the miracles out. He wanted only things that could be empirically verifiable. So boom,

that's gone. Y'all ain't believing in that. They were what they call mechanistic deists. That means God wound the world up, put it in order, and let it go on its own. So when Albert Einstein years later, when he's debating Werner Heisenberg and about you know, theories of physics, Einstein believed in the you know, that there's phenomena that you could specifically note where it is. Heisenberg said, now it's an uncertainty principle. We don't quite know where it is. We're

trying to figure it out. It's approximately here. I said God. Einstein said, God does not play dice with the universe. So what he meant by God was you know, Einstein was an atheist. He meant the structure of the universe natural law. So I'm saying all that to say, when y'all be saying this is a Christian nation and has founded upon these principles, stop lying. Do your homework. It was far more complicated and nuanced than we believed, and they believed in the different kind of God than we

believe in. Now, same with democracy. They were not for everybody participating. But the genius of those documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is that we could take what they said and use it for our advantage, because we could expand democracy to the parameters that they claimed to want to do but never did. That's the beauty of our country.

She Texas, hold them. I mean, she making the music and she grew up in Houston, Texas. Y'all what y'all think? Of course, she loves country music. I grew up in Detroit. My daddy was from George and mama from Alabama. We listened to country music. Hey, good looking, what you got cooking? How's about cooking something up with me? Come on, man, I mean you know, I mean we would listening to

that country music. Ray Charles putting it down. We're watching George Hamilton play, you know, the great, great country singer and who died in his early mid twenties. So the point is that we listened to country. We are country, We helped produce country. Country is like the white blues, and blues is like the black country. So there were

similar traits, musical styles, signatures, cadences and the like. So Beyonce grew up with that ginguinely and now to be denied that, how well else you gonna say, But it's a racial segregation of a marketplace that they are seeking to undermine, that they are seeking to open up, that they're seeking the challenge. And look, I live in Nashville, Tennessee.

I love country music. I'm down with it. I go to the CMA's my very dear friend Mia McNeil, who I had the chance to a performer wedding ceremony A brilliant advocate for DEI in country music is there. So they're making strives. But this right here is a black mark pun intended on country music, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves for denying the very means by which they could become even more popular. Think about it. Michael Jackson had to argue for his music to be

played on MTV. Please, White establishment, allow me to save you. Allow me to come in and make videos that will revive your genre. And so at the same time, here what we got to acknowledge is that Beyonce brought a different audience to what's going on. Think about it. When Taylor Swift is at the NFL, they're embracing it. Let's show Taylor every two point seven seconds with her boyfriend and clapping and so on and so forth. So now Beyonce comes in, it's a different story. It's ball racism,

it's bigotry. And Howard Thurmant said, the biggot is a person who makes an idol of his commitments. They've they've committed themselves to a narrow range of what is a popular and appropriate and I think it's shameful and they are to be called on it. For the racist that racism that that represents.

United States of America. They went to Brazil, they went to may Cole, they went to the Caribbean, and less than four hundred thousand came here. Number one, Why is that important? Because when we're talking about who's black and who's not, because you know, people debating me, we ain't telling you so stupid. Okay, you could say that, but I got my bona for days. You're so stupid. It's not about race and Drake, It's about culture. He's a

culture vulture. Are you serious? Right now? What other black entertainer do you know has ever been called a culture vulture for experimenting in his own or her own music. That's number one. Number two, Drake grew up in Toronto, adopting different musical persona was indigenous to that particular region. Number two, Number three, A lot of black folk went to Canada when they were trying to escape the murderous

privileges of whiteness in America where slaveocracy was established. So when you say Drake is illegitimate or not genuine because he doesn't like a Black American culture or doesn't embrace it, blackness is bigger than what happens in the United States of America. Kamala Harris, what did they say, She's got a fake accent? Sound familiar, Drake with those fake accents? This is what artists do. What did Jay Z say, we're all actors? De Niro in training? What did Fat

Joe say? Ninety seven percent itself is made up? That's what artists do. We don't hold al pacino, Are you really a member of the mob. We don't do that too. Maybe Frank Sinatra. We gave him an exception, but there were many others who do this right. We don't say you have to live the life you sing about in your song, which is a great gospel song, beautif when Mahela Jackson is singing it, not so much when you're trying to act like what's on that film as you

or what's in that booth as you. We make stuff up. That's what art does. That's what fiction writers do. That's what Tony Morrison does. Now. Tony Morrison's Beloved is based upon a real story Margaret Garner, right, who killed her own children and before I'll be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave and go home to my God and be free, or kill my own kids. But she

fictionalized the expression of that idea. Why is it that Drake becomes the avatar and symbol of what is not genuine in blackness when it's your narrow conception of blackness that prohibits him from flourishing in many ways? So I got big arguments with that. Kamala Harris. They said the same thing about Drake as her. You got a fake accent. You went to Canada to go to school. Jade Vance has been on her about that, and then that you are not genuinely black in the way that other black

people are. Blackness by definition is subversive. It undermines narrow categories. I spent most of my career arguing against people who are trying to impose narrow constraints upon on blackness. We are as big as our imaginations allow us to be. And I think this is one of the sorry moments within hip hop and black culture where Drake becomes automatically uh the the representative of what is inauthentic, and Kamala Harrison the same way, you ain't really black. She's not

a real black woman. Even Donald Trump is trying to weigh in by saying she just turned black, like she had malaria or some of a disease and you know, leprosy, and that she became black. This is the kind of ignorance that we've got to confront.

A couple three weeks ago. I get a text, bring back the glasses. So I said, it was this text to be and he says, I guess people feel the same way about my hair. Ha ha ha. So you know I'm wearing them, Jay, what's I'm here right now? Other people have been saying it too. Because I had cataract surgery, I didn't need glass anymore, but you know I was. Mike said, I didn't even know it was you.

we've ever produced? Absolutely, and who knows, maybe he'll bring Little Wayne on. But I think again, our privilege which creates a certain kind of opportunity here to argue about stuff that we didn't even have five years ago before got involved.

If democracy is we define in this book as people power and the ability of people to control and govern the institutions that regulate their lives, to be able to dictate the terms of their existence by full participation in American democracy, then we have to conclude this man is a danger and a threat to American democracy. Now, he tried to flip that by saying, this is why they attempted to assassinate me, because they have demonized me and painted me as a bete noir, as a horrible person

for American democracy. But you are, sir, so I think it's right for us to acknowledge that in this election, we are choosing between that on the one hand, and a woman who is the representative of all that is great and good about America as a black and black women alread running stuff. They might as well run the countries, right. I mean, at the end of the day, without black women,

where would we be, right, I wouldn't be here. Most of us wouldn't be here without a black woman and a black woman not only in terms of physically, but in terms of the mental approach. When I go to these places where they're supporting black men and how black men have been this, it's black women leading away. It's black women saying, give our men a chance, give our boys a chance. Black women are standing up for us

in ways we don't stand up for them. Twenty years ago, twenty one years ago, I wrote a book called Why I Love Black Women. It wasn't no thing, it wasn't no black girl magic, it wasn't no black boy joy. I did it because I felt that it was necessary to celebrate black women because they were being dissedant, dismissed. And look, you can choose who you want as a life partner. If you and this microphone get along, I get it. Hey, I like you I like you too.

expressed at home. And I think, and I know this is controversial. I think some of the black men who are for Trump. Look, I know there are reasons for that, and I don't diss them, but some of this is straight up misogyny. Some of it is straight up patriarchy. And what's ironic to me is that some black men who don't want a woman being a pastor of their church, and trust me, I preach in these churches might now end up having a woman as president of the United

States of America. Ain't that God in a pan souit in high heels, you know? And look, Barack Obama was Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinon's great quality. He was a great ballplayer. He had tremendous skill, but his greatest skill was his ability to endure white supremacy and give it a licking while he kept doing what he's doing, kept doing what he was doing without being angry.

freer because of the sacrifice of Jackie Robinson. So the joy of Kamala Harris grows from the hope of Barack Obama. Because Barack Obama had hope. Now Kamala Harris can have joy. And she is Willie Mays in high heels and she's stepping and I continue to support and love that woman because she represents the best of who we.