The Munk Debates Podcast - Michael Eric Dyson On The Politics Of Race And The U.S. Election

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

On this episode of the Munk Debates Podcast, Michael Eric Dyson, best-selling author joins us to discuss the future of the politics of race in the shadow of the most consequential U.S. election in a generation.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness to stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesmen to statesmen like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Thanks for listening to the Monk debates. For the next couple of weeks, leading up to the U.S. election on November 3rd, we are changing the format for this program.

Instead of our usual debate, we are going to provide you with in-depth interviews with some of the world's smartest thinkers on the big issues driving the U.S. election, from the pandemic to the economy, to the polarization of U.S. politics and society. We are calling this mini-series the Monk Dialogues. Like our debates, the focus of each Monk Dialogue is smart and civil conversation,

free of spin and focused on the facts. In this installment of the Monk Dialogs, we feature Michael Eric Dyson, best-selling author and racial justice campaigner, on the future of politics of race in the shadow of the most consequential U.S. election in a generation. Here he is in dialogue with Monk Debates Chair, Rudyard Griffiths. Hello, I'm Rudyard Griffiths, the host of the Monk Dialogues. Thank you for being part of our conversation this evening to lead us through a conversation, an important conversation on the reckoning on race tonight, a reckoning that is unfolding again against the backdrop of a high

stakes, high-tension U.S. election and a global pandemic. We're joined by one of a America's leading public intellectuals, someone who I've consistently turned to over the years to understand issues of race and identity. His name is Michael Eric Dyson. He's off to Vanderbilt University this year to hold a prestigious chair in sociology. He's the best-selling author of over 22 books on American history, identity, and race. He's a regular public commentator on public radio, MSNBC, and CNN. He has a PhD in religious studies. from Princeton and was an ordained Baptist pastor. And most importantly, Michael, you and I got to know each other

through the monk debates and through your appearance here in Toronto, Canada for the monk debate on political correctness. Thank you, my friend, for joining us tonight. Thank you, my friend. Great to be back here and to hang out with my dear neighbors to the north. Well, look, I want to dive right in here and kind of tap, you know, all that muscle memory that you built up through a career, of writing and thinking about issues of race and identity in America,

and maybe just give us a bit of a scene set or a sense of where you feel this, your country is at in this moment. Are you optimistic about the conversation around race that America is having now? Or, you know, should we instead be thinking that the glass is half full as we confront this historic vote? Well, I'm reminded of the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who said that there was a sharp distinction to be made between optimism and hope. Optimism is a rather shallow virtue. It's premised on discovering the way the wind is blowing or to read the tea leaves to determine

what might be a likely outcome. And based upon that, whether or not one can foster any sense of hopefulness about the future. On the other hand, hope is a more deeply entrenched virtue. And since I'm a Baptist preacher, it's rooted in a theological dispute with the world against the evidence of Amin and doom and against the evidence of calamity and cataclysm and chaos. And so in that sense, I'm not optimistic, but I am hopeful, as the Bible says, hope against hope, putting forth a narrative, a thought, a possibility, an imagination that goes against the grain because the present grain is dystopic. It is not a utopian. It is the embodiment of some of the worst racist, animus, anti-black sentiment, anti-Semitism, anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant fervor, the xenophobia

that has besieged this nation, all reduced in one sense symbolically to the vain flesh of a man who is the president of the United States of America. But a man, but a man, man who fuels and fosters fear, a man who is our bigot in chief, a man who just today termed the woman, the first black and first Asian woman, Indian woman, who is running for the vice presidency on the ticket with Joe Biden, called her this monster and a communist. No shame there. But the reality is, is that we're living in a time where also today we discovered that near the Canadian border in Detroit, Michigan, of course, we discovered today that up to 13 men, part of a militia as domestic terrorists, were plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan and then take her to Wisconsin, I think,

and put her on trial and then execute her for offenses against their conception of what America ought to be about. They wanted to live according to the Bill of Rights and not to the broader conception of democracy. So we are living in times of global pandemic, of racial pandemic, of racial unease. And in this very moment, it is, as you've said, one of the most consequential elections

in the history of this nation. And we will determine whether we will head down a path that will be further imbued with the sorts of viciousness and the sorts of hostilities that have been mercilessly unleashed on this country in the form of a despotic, willfully ignorant president who refuses to adhere to science, who refuses to listen to doctors, who is himself presently afflicted with COVID-19, and yet ignoring every common sense and medical restriction that would apply to him. And so in the midst of all of this, a global pandemic, a racial pandemic, the kind of war upon science, the war upon human reason, the war upon human decency, I feel that I must be hopeful but not optimistic, hopeful because I think we create the future with our present actions.

And I think that we are committed in this country to finding a different way to grapple with a different set of facts and rationales that justify our standing as a great nation. the peril from within will become soon apparent even more to those of us who live here, if it's not already apparent to those outside this country, for whom we have become a laughingstock and a shameful display of a once great nation in the embrace of a willful fascist who stands every morning on his social media to excrete the feces of his moral depravity into a nation he has turned into his psychic commode. We must fight back, and I'm trying to, as much as I can, generate enough resistance in my spot on this terrain in order to make the future a brighter reality than it is now. Well, thank you, Michael. The phrase of psychic commode is now going to be seared into my mind for the next 45 minutes with you.

So let's try to tear that down plank by plank and talk to you a little bit more about this distinction. I think it's a smart one you're making between hope and. optimism and how those two things are really just fundamentally different. And to go back to what we saw in terms of the reaction to Black Lives Matter this year and how a movement that seemed to a certain extent to be on the fringe of, I would say, not just American consciousness, but Canadian consciousness too, Michael, has really sprung into the fore. Give us a sense of how you think the Black Lives Matter movement is going to influence this election. potentially shape voters' perceptions when they head to the polls on November 3rd.

Right. Well, what a difference a day makes. You know, that day I'm referring to as what? Is it May 25th? I stand to be corrected of 2020 when George Floyd met his bitter fate on a street corner in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when a man who is a former cop, Derek Chauvin, who recently, as of yesterday, made a... a million-dollar bail, no doubt helped by those American citizens who believe that the cops are getting a raw deal, that when they are held to account, that when escalating tensions between law enforcement and African-American and Latinx and other minority communities continues to get ramped up each year, ratcheted it up, with such lethal intensity that they are so knee-jerk,

defensive about the cops that millions of dollars can be raised with the hope that they will be defended. So he made his bail of a million dollars. But here was a man, Derek Chauvin, with his hand in his pocket, showing a kind of vicious casualness, digging even deeper his knee into the neck of a man who pleaded for relief saying he could not breathe, but he could not be believed. He was a phantom of somebody's imagination and certainly not a real. life and blood figure who demanded the kind of respect that ostensibly police are committed to. So that day changed America fundamentally because many white brothers and sisters who had here to four been skeptical or cautious in their embrace of black people in our constant war of interpretation

against a state and a police force that continually says black people are dangerous, that we provoked our own deaths, that because of our out of control, behavior we are deserving of the kinds of baton, tasering, shooting, and the like, or in this case, asphyxiation that ends up hurting us, harming us, and often killing us. That day changed because four years before, five years before when Black Lives Matter was coming into its own and expressing an idea that is so simple, so eloquent, so profound, and yet so very, so resisted by so many millions in this country and perhaps around the world of black lives mattering. And then, of course, you had the All Lives Matter movement and the Blue Lives Matter.

Now, blue lives, what's the Blue Life? The Blue is a profession. The blue is an expertise acquired through repeated efforts to master a domain of both inquiry and a pursuit of law enforcement. It has nothing to do with what you're born with. an existential condition. It's one that one assume. So to make that parallel was a philosophical problem, but it was also a practical insult to those who are born black, who have lived with the consequences of that blackness in this country. And yes, all lives do matter, but they don't

matter until black lives also matter. It was a philosophical and logical contradiction. All lives matter. They should, but if they don't, we have to point that out. There was something offensive to the American consciousness. The American ego could not collectively abide the pointing out that there was a flaw. Now there was a recognition with George Floyd's death. Oh my God, it's as bad as they say it is. We saw with our own eyes. Why? Because we were home during a pandemic. So the screens were lit with effluvia, but also the flibbert of people talking and tick-tocking, but also screens captured the kind of vital register of American dis-ease with blackness. On the one hand, there was a global pandemic that was making

our lungs spongy and making it difficult for us to inhale. And there was a pandemic of race that was seen, most especially with the vicious treatment of black people by the police. And guess what? They came together. I can't breathe, either because the police have their knee upon our necks collectively or symbolically. And I can't breathe because of a global pandemic. That changed. Black Lives Matter became a poignant expression of black desire to overcome the odds that are arrayed against us and linked that movement, Black Lives Matter, to earlier episodes of Black resistance, earlier struggles of Black freedom. As you said, for the first time, many white brothers and sisters came into the street, not just white, red, yellow, black, and brown together, joining in common

cause against this vicious indifference to Black life. And it changed the temperature of society, changed the discourse, and the attempt of America and its neighbors and global partners to really reckon with the systemic racism and the systematic oppression that is deeply inscribed in American society. Thank you, Michael. Important words to listen and live by. We're looking at polls right now that seem to suggest that Joe Biden could have a commanding lead going into the vote on November 3rd. Hypothetically, if we have a Biden presidency inaugurated in January, what do you think the black community in America is going to look to that presidency to deliver on?

Because we know that that community, the black community, was really essential to turning around his leadership bid. Yes, well, I think, look, a 16-point lead, which he presently enjoys, still makes one a bit nervous. We recall Hillary Clinton had about a, what, eight-point lead. She won the popular vote by nearly three million votes, but she lost it in the electoral college. And we know that the electoral college is a holdover from enslavement trying to give disproportionate weight to those slave states here in America so that they could really be represented with their viewpoints of the Confederacy, trying to maintain enslavement, trying to maintain states' rights. I am hopeful that Joe Biden, Biden can't overcome, but we have to be especially vigilant, less than 30 days left before we have

this signal and profound election. And it's not merely an election of two figures who are the titular heads of government. It's about a way of life. It's about a way of proceeding. It's how we treat each other. It's how we see each other. So yes, what we would hope of President Biden and a Vice President Harris is a restoration of the dignity of black life in this country from the official realm of the White House of government. We would hope that public policy would catch up with that recognition. We would hope that the debate about affirmative action and the debate about reparations would be put on a serious political standing. We hope that health care would be protected. Roe versus Wade, a woman's right to have an abortion,

affirmative action, the ability of the society to say we have had historic legacies of inequality now let's try to address them. Those public policies are extremely important. Those laws are extremely important. What about housing and fair housing? So those public policies, along with trying to make sure that educational disparities are addressed policies where young black kids are kicked out of school earlier and earlier on the local level, how we have grand juries, how we impanel them.

And finally, really wrestling with what we do about the police in this country. How do we treat law enforcement? How do we see the accruing of such enormous power by police unions that really undercut the democratic process and allowed the outrageous power that they've been able to accumulate to undermine simple justice for millions of people of color and others in our United States of America? If we can get some of that stuff off the decks and pursue some of this in a more healthy fashion, I think that would be a great step toward redeeming this nation and restoring decency and respect for democracy and government and human citizenship in our own country. Thank you, Michael.

Michael, let's start taking some of these questions that have come in for you over the last 48 hours. The first comes from Margaret and Montreal. She's asking, if you could chat with Malcolm X right now, what do you think he would say about the Trump presidency, the escalation? of racism and violence, the Black Lives Matter movement. Would he be optimistic? Let's insert your word hopeful about the future of American society. It's an interesting question because you wrote a really powerful and insightful biography book on Malcolm X. So this is a historical figure that you know well.

How would Malcolm X look at this moment? There's no question that Malcolm X, you know, foresaw such a condition as we are presently ensnared in. And so he talked about ending worldwide white supremacy. And so he spoke about white supremacy. It's not a word I've used tonight. But Malcolm X constantly talked about it. This is not finger pointing against individual white brothers and sisters, whether in America or Canada, whether in Mochreale or whether in Montana.

The question is, how do we collectively pay obeisance to an ideal of white superiority inherently, a kind of a prior argument philosophically? You come in the door, that's what it is. White folk are better than, and black folk and brown folk and red and yellow folk are less than. And so white supremacy is the critical extension into public policy, into social etiquette, into public protocol, into behavior, and into public policy and politics of the belief that white comfort, white identity, white privilege should be nurtured, should be protected, that white ideal, should be the norm for how we look at the world and the lens through which we view the rest of one's

country and the rest of the globe. And so Malcolm X was brilliant in trying to chastise America and the world about white supremacy and the worship of white supremacy and the belief that it should set the terms of the debate between us. And he also said the following. He said, you can't stick a knife in a man's or woman's back nine inches, pull it out six inches and call that progress. So we can't have these, you know, faint liberal appreciations for allyship without the attending attempt and effort to make a transformation of our practices. So Malcolm X would say, hey, I tried to tell you back in the late 50s and early 60s about white supremacy, I tried to tell you that around the globe, the worship of this ideal would have led

to a figure like a Donald Trump who embraces a. neo-fascism, who embraces neo-Nazism, who embraces anti-Semitism, who embraces anti-blackness, despite saying he doesn't, and refuses to characterize them as a scourge in our society. Malcolm X would say, I told you so, this is what I was talking about, and let's go back to some of the rudimentary principles that can help us achieve a hopeful outcome. A, let's face it, B, let's root it out as much as we can. C, let's work together. across the board to make certain that our society reflects the ideals that we have nobly fought for and sometimes ignobly repudiated in our own culture. And then, D, he would say, let's find a way

to focus on the fundamental appreciation for the decency of all human life and to fight against everything that would contradict that noble principle. Great question. Great answer. Let's build on this and go to our next audience question. We'll get that up on the board now. It comes from Dietrich in Washington, D.C. What are your thoughts on American trust as it relates to the presidential debates? Even as a Democrat, the last two debates

make me feel we are truly in need of an extra third candidate, a third party. Dietrich asked maybe rhetorically, is Bernie Sanders that bad for the free world? And I guess, Michael, this goes partly to my desire to hear your thoughts on that, moment when you turned on the television last night and you saw Kamala Harris, the first black woman in a vice presidential debate on that stage, what did that signify for you?

First of all, Bernie Sanders is great for American democratic processes and procedures. An extraordinary politician has revived the left wing in this country along with AOC, you know, in this country, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many of her other colleagues Ayana Presley and representatives Omar and others, you know, have done an extraordinary job in my sister from Michigan. So the thing is, is that, yes, we need more, not less. We need more vital political information, more vital political data, more engagement, more interaction. And yes, narrowing it down to two parties, as we can tell, has been powerfully destructive in some ways and has really been a force that has been used against broadening out at the horizon of political possibility

and embracing, you know, novel ideas and then supporting those who promote them. When I saw Kamala Harris last night, I saw the dignity, strength, and intelligence of black womanhood. I saw the beauty and the power and the noble, if you will, sanctification through hurt and pain and trauma and overcoming and struggle of the black's female soul and how high intelligence wedded to deep and profound principle yields broader perspectives than the pinched, narrow, circumscribed, and heck-need phrases, constantly quoting Daniel Patrick Mornayam,

you're welcome to your own opinions, but not your own facts, said the man who has been a manufacturer of lies and mendacities along with the president of the United States of America. So I saw the difficulty that she had, because do you not believe, and for one minute, don't assume, that Kamala Harris couldn't have come back

against this man very strongly and pointed out some of his foibles and faults and flaws, his mendicities, his lies, his deceits, his truncated analyses. She could have hit him verbally, but she would have been called the angry black woman. It's nearly impossible for black people to show the full panoply of their rhetorical mastery

in such a fashion that would embarrass this white figure and therefore cause great consternation and anger and even some of the white folk who were listening who felt that they may have been on her side because the white ego is fragile. The collective white outlook in this country is imbued with such unconscious and unspoken privilege that to challenge any of that

is seen to challenge the very principles of American democracy. How ironic is that when you've got terrorists out here in the name of America who are undercutting our precious democracy. So I saw a very difficult attempt to negotiate, but a brilliant one and a successful one, ultimately, of a black woman who would be called angry if she got upset, who was scrutinized, as was Hillary Clinton four years before her, because women are subject to a far more brutal, double, triple, quadruple standard when it comes to interpreting their behavior, looking at their faces, and those who were supporters of, I think, a common sense approach to political reality in this

country could not help but at least acknowledge the legitimacy of her approach and the legitimacy of her ideas. It's very difficult. White privilege is deep. This guy kept interrupting. He kept going against the rules. the poor white woman who was the moderator, unfortunately became complicit in his own nefarious manipulations

because she refused to hold him to account and she held Kamala Harris more strictly to the time limits while allowing this man to go on and on and on. This is white male privilege. This is patriarchal poisonous privilege. This is toxic masculinity. And this is femophobia. I was so proud of Kamala Harris and amen.

And she would make an extraordinary, vice president and I think a remarkable first black female, first Asian female president of the United States of America. Thank you for listening to the Monk Debates podcast. If you enjoy the civil and substantive conversations, we convene week in and week out on the podcast, please consider becoming a Monk Debates member. As a member, you get unlimited access to our 10 years plus video and audio online library of world-class debates. You also get three complementary memberships you can use to share the art of great debate with family and friends. Still not convinced? Order one of over a dozen Monk Debates book publications for free if you become a member now. Monk Debates memberships

are 30% off this month for new enrollees. Visit monkdebates.com Membership for more details. Now, back to our Monk Dialogue with best-selling author Michael Eric Dyson. Let's go to our next question that's been emailed into us. It comes from Helen, from Auckland, New Zealand. Great. We've got our friends,

I don't know how many time zones away that is. Helen's question for you, Michael, is what in your view is the moment in American history that most resembles 2020? She throws out some dates. Is it, 1968? 1861, 1775. Or she asked, are we in a unique historical moment that really has no comparison to what's come before? Wow, Helen of Auckland. That's a remarkable question. Let's just throw it all

in the hodgepog. Let's just say all three of them. 1775, the year before American independence is struck when a group of men and women outraged at the lethal limits imposed upon them by the arbitrary exercise of power in British culture began to chafe at those restraints and then dressing up thugs, protesters, right, rioters, going and stealing tea, throwing it into the water, dressing up, right, officially misidentifying themselves, identity theft. Look at all the crimes that were committed in the name of commitment to liberation and to revolution. by those figures who eventually founded a nation and created the opportunity for a birth of freedom, a new birth of freedom, as the poet says, that permits us to continue to be inspired by their example.

So I think 1775 is instructive. I think 1861 is instructive when we're in the midst of a civil war and trying to negotiate the future of this American democracy. Will we last half free, half enslaved? Will we elect a president who will articulate the noble ideals of the American compact such that he appeals to the better angels of our nature and becomes the embodiment of the truest ideals upon which this nation rest? and upon which it was founded, the 270-odd words he would utter in the Gettysburg address as he tried to nobly memorialize the loss of life.

He said, we shall not long remember what happened here, but because of his immortal words cascading down the corridors of history, we remember what occurred. So Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War and the fight of brother against brother, sister against sister, father against father, son against son, that led to mortal peril in this nation and reconfigured our, if you will, democracy in fundamental fashion. And then finally, 1968 with the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest American in my mind ever. But Dr. King, who stood at the Sunlit Summit of Expectation in 1963 and articulated his vision of America, his noble dream, his imagination about what America could be. I have a dream one day,

my four little children were living a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. 34 words uttered when he was 34 years old. And yet he saw later that year, he said his dream turned into a nightmare. And not two years later, he saw the urban uprising as in rebellions and Watts and Newark and Detroit and the like, the flames that incinerated American possibility in the contradictions of American ignobility and the refusal to acknowledge the humanity of black people in this nation. And his death that then set off fires of resentment, fires of hurt, fires of grief in this nation, and set the course for both white backlash and continued black resistance. So I think all three of those times are suggestive.

And I think today, when we look at black and white protesters, in one sense, there's a new day. Because white protesters have joined the movement in ways and in numbers that they have never done before. These are the largest social and political protests in the nation's history. So while it gathers together that totemic trilogy of years, 1775, 1861, 1968, you can can add 2020 to those totemic numerologies that define the American soul that have global consequence and that have the potential to move us forward with a true reckoning with both our racist past and our racially just future. Wow, Michael, thank you. That is a tour to force. A lesson in U.S. history, I am not going to soon forget. Thank you. Let's go to our next question that was emailed in

from Shanitha here in Toronto. She's asking, what do you think is the future of the Black Lives Matter movement? Will it remain a movement of protest? Will it become a platform for a new generation of black political leadership in America? What do you think its legacy is, Michael? Shanitha, it's a great question,

as all of them have been, and it's especially prescient because I think that's the issue before us now, before that trio of founders, two queer black women and a straight black woman who together forged connection drew common inspiration from each other's struggle in the aftermath, especially of the unjust death of Trayvon Martin, that impelled a movement forward.

It was a hashtag. It became a movement. It's a set of ideals that I think capture the best impulse of the black freedom struggle in America. I think it continues to do all of that, both a movement and a platform. Movements don't last forever. The civil rights movement of the 1960s, of course, gave way to what happened in the 70s and 80s. But, you know, movements arise and then subside, or reinvent themselves, are reborn.

And I think that Black Lives Matter is a movement that will forever be memorialized by people's attempt to insist upon the fundamental dignity of black life in America. That notion, unfortunately, is very difficult for the masses to embrace, although far more now than even before May of this year, but it will be an ongoing battle. And I think in that sense, and to that degree, Black Lives Matter will not go away in whatever form it survives. If there's any word that is characteristic of Black America, it is the word next. So we start with filled hollers, and then we lead to spirituals, and then we lead to blue. and then to jazz and to funk and R&B and rock and roll and hip hop.

It's always the next. When it gets appropriated, when it gets taken up, when it gets absorbed by the dominant culture, sometimes to good effect and sometimes not, then black people are relentlessly creative. And next is the key word to black existence. And I think it's exciting to discover what will come next. It sure will be. Let's take our next question that came in.

This is from James Gardner in Asheville, North Carolina, beautiful Asheville. In a perilous time of official incitement and actual perpetration of violence, what is the best argument for nonviolence? What's your reflection on where we're at in terms of this struggle to bring our morals, our principles forward in the public square? when, as you've said, the public square right now is such a charged, polarized, and dangerous place. Yes, well, thanks, James Gardner. Look, I think that when we look at American society and we see the vicious consequence, the official incitement, I believe Mr. Gardner said, is so beautifully stated. And this is official because the government itself is engaging in nefarious activity,

engaging in unconscionable incitement to violence by government officials. Look at our own president who commandeered the military to take a walk at the height of the rebellion this summer against racial injustice and moved the people out of the way, a multicultural throng, a gaggle of supporters of justice for a photo op in front of a church with the Bible held upside down. No clearer symbol could ever be had of how his theology has been turned upside down by his, you know, criminal level of ignorance about both politics and theology. But it is official incitement. The government attacking vulnerable people through the police. The police, after all, represent the government.

And the most immediate symbol of interaction between African-American people and the state is often a police person. And look at how often unjust that has. has been. I tried to give a foreshadowing of my answer to this question when I suggested that those men and women, mostly men who went in the Boston Harbor for the Boston Tea Party, were they not looters? They were literally looting what did not belong to them. But now, retroactively, we look back upon those criminal activities and we blessed them with a kind of noble baptism because we suggest that those were the originating events, the founding ideals of America, well, how is it that we look at people of all races and colors who are in these streets, being

beat up by the police, forced in ugly fashion to obey the arbitrary interpretation of law by police. You are not, as a police person, a judge and jury, yet you execute a warrant and sometimes black people's lives. So to me, often African-American people were being victimized by law enforcement in ways that were not being held to account. And as Mr. Gardner talked about, the official incitement, so really when we look at it, let's be honest.

If you were a people who had been held captive by white supremacy, by slavery for 250, 300 years, Jim Crow, the official enshrinement in government, public policy and law of the coerced inferiority of African-American people, wouldn't you be upset to? If you lived in a neighborhood where the police could come into your neighborhood and steal not just your future, but your life, literally, what do you own then? When people say, how ridiculous is it of you, black people, to burn down your own neighborhood? They don't own a neighborhood if they can't own their own bodies.

And the hypocrisy of pointing this out as the major offense and not the precipitating acts of violence, even if they're rendered more invisible, but because they've become neutralized, because they've become objectively part of law, the criminal intent of white supremacy has often found legal cover. So no, I'm not justifying criminal activity. I'm suggesting that the greatest criminal activity has been left on the table, the refusal to acknowledge the wrong that has been done to so many people of color. And the relatively small loss of property pales in comparison to the repeated loss of black life in the face of a government that refuses to acknowledge our humanity through the police.

And looting, my God, we were looted from Africa, looted from our resting place in Africa, looted when we got here, looted of our futures, looted of our wounds, our looms became factories to manufacture citizens who were not seen as citizens, human beings who would become part and parcel, wolf and warp of the infrastructure of slavery to economically and socially brutalize us. looting, taking our futures when freedom came, putting us in all black neighborhoods and refusing to give us equal opportunities educationally while we paid our taxes. Taxation without representation, we know all about that. So please, when you make those arguments and look at

those historical parallels, please do not make the mistake that Dr. King warned us against. He said, yes, I will not speak out against those who loot in what without also speaking out. against the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, he said, which is the United States government. We would do well to remember his prescient, prophetic, and I think powerful words. Well, those are indeed prophetic, prescient, and powerful words, Michael. Michael, you've been very generous with your time. Just on behalf of all of us here, your fans in Canada, thank you for coming on the program. Let's find an opportunity to get you back here to Canada, the Monk Debate stage was built for people like you with your amazing breadth and depth

of knowledge of history and society and culture and your ability to communicate those ideas with such versatility and humility and substance. We really appreciate the opportunity to listen to your thoughtful words tonight. Thank you, my friend. It was a great honor to be here once again. Thanks for listening to the Monk Dialogues with Michael Eric Dyson. We have hope you enjoyed the opportunity to listen to smart civil conversation on the U.S. election and its impact on the future of racial justice in America. For more information on the Monk Dialogs, visit our website at monkdebates.com slash dialogue.

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