Read Online The Michael Eric Dyson Reader by Michael Eric Dyson - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Eric Dyson
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Prize, so the decision to grant him tenure was, by those terms at least, a risk, and second, since the president couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t achieve equal prominence in my field, it made no sense to deny me tenure either. Needless to say, I rejected Northwestern’s offer.) Chapel Hill made the extraordinary step of offering me tenure and a full professorship, in light of the fact that I had completed my next book, which would be published shortly, a study of Malcolm X.
Wait. If it normally takes seven years to get tenure in the first place, it must take at least another seven years, if not longer, to become a full professor, right?
Well, it certainly can. After seven years, a scholar who successfully obtains tenure is usually made an associate professor. When you write the next book or two, depending on where you teach, you can be granted full professorship. And that may take seven to ten years, or in some cases not quite as long, and in other cases, significantly longer. So yes, it’s safe to say that I was fortunate enough to do in a year what can in other circumstances take as long as seventeen to more than twenty years to achieve. In a way, I have been driven by the sense that I have to make up for lost tune, which, ironically enough, has put me ahead of the pace of some ofmy peers. Plus, I felt a sense of responsibility to my peers from my old neighborhood who will never be able to achieve at the levels I have enjoyed, not because they aren’t talented, but because they lack opportunity. Or, on my block, most of them are either in prison or dead. I felt blessed by God, and I didn’t want to blow it. Plus, a lot of the early writing and speaking I did—which, as it turns out, helped me to climb the academic ladder rapidly—was not only driven by a sense of vocation, but was done as well in the desperate attempt to raise funds for my brother Everett’s defense against the charge, and later the conviction, of seconddegree murder. Almost the month after I landed in Chicago to teach at CTS, Everett was accused of murdering a young black man in Detroit. I believe he is innocent, and I have expended quite a few resources in trying to prove his innocence, and to free him from prison. He’s been there now for eight years. That has given me great incentive to work as hard as I can, and of course, I’m sure there’s a good bit of survivor guilt involved as well.
Have you ever talked with John Edgar Wideman? He crossed my mind; as you know, he’s had a similar circumstance with his brother.
We’ve talked, but not about our brothers. Yes, he too has had to deal with that strange and haunting reality that often morphs into a tragic trope of black existence: one brother a prisoner, the other a professor. One of you free to move, the other one caged like an animal. The effect of that thought on one’s psyche is like an enormous downward gravitational pull. But I’m grateful to God for the ability to be able to do what I do, because I know it’s a tremendous gift and pleasure and leisure to be able to write and think. And I work hard, traveling around the country giving lectures, speeches, and sermons, writing books, articles, and essays, just trying, as the hip-hoppers say, “to represent.” So I spend long hours at what I do, but I’m not complaining. I’m a well-paid, highly visible black public intellectual who is grateful for what God has done for him and who wants to pass it on to somebody else. I don’t want to keep it for myself. I want to make sure that other people get a chance to express their talents and their visions. I have no desire to be the H.N.I.C., or the “Head Nigger In Charge.”
Do you get a sense of that . . . when you are in your flow . . . do you know the impact you’re having on a room?
That’s a good question. Let’s not have any false modesty: I’m a public speaker and I’ve been trained from a very young age in the art of verbal articulation. I’ve been seasoned
Wait. If it normally takes seven years to get tenure in the first place, it must take at least another seven years, if not longer, to become a full professor, right?
Well, it certainly can. After seven years, a scholar who successfully obtains tenure is usually made an associate professor. When you write the next book or two, depending on where you teach, you can be granted full professorship. And that may take seven to ten years, or in some cases not quite as long, and in other cases, significantly longer. So yes, it’s safe to say that I was fortunate enough to do in a year what can in other circumstances take as long as seventeen to more than twenty years to achieve. In a way, I have been driven by the sense that I have to make up for lost tune, which, ironically enough, has put me ahead of the pace of some ofmy peers. Plus, I felt a sense of responsibility to my peers from my old neighborhood who will never be able to achieve at the levels I have enjoyed, not because they aren’t talented, but because they lack opportunity. Or, on my block, most of them are either in prison or dead. I felt blessed by God, and I didn’t want to blow it. Plus, a lot of the early writing and speaking I did—which, as it turns out, helped me to climb the academic ladder rapidly—was not only driven by a sense of vocation, but was done as well in the desperate attempt to raise funds for my brother Everett’s defense against the charge, and later the conviction, of seconddegree murder. Almost the month after I landed in Chicago to teach at CTS, Everett was accused of murdering a young black man in Detroit. I believe he is innocent, and I have expended quite a few resources in trying to prove his innocence, and to free him from prison. He’s been there now for eight years. That has given me great incentive to work as hard as I can, and of course, I’m sure there’s a good bit of survivor guilt involved as well.
Have you ever talked with John Edgar Wideman? He crossed my mind; as you know, he’s had a similar circumstance with his brother.
We’ve talked, but not about our brothers. Yes, he too has had to deal with that strange and haunting reality that often morphs into a tragic trope of black existence: one brother a prisoner, the other a professor. One of you free to move, the other one caged like an animal. The effect of that thought on one’s psyche is like an enormous downward gravitational pull. But I’m grateful to God for the ability to be able to do what I do, because I know it’s a tremendous gift and pleasure and leisure to be able to write and think. And I work hard, traveling around the country giving lectures, speeches, and sermons, writing books, articles, and essays, just trying, as the hip-hoppers say, “to represent.” So I spend long hours at what I do, but I’m not complaining. I’m a well-paid, highly visible black public intellectual who is grateful for what God has done for him and who wants to pass it on to somebody else. I don’t want to keep it for myself. I want to make sure that other people get a chance to express their talents and their visions. I have no desire to be the H.N.I.C., or the “Head Nigger In Charge.”
Do you get a sense of that . . . when you are in your flow . . . do you know the impact you’re having on a room?
That’s a good question. Let’s not have any false modesty: I’m a public speaker and I’ve been trained from a very young age in the art of verbal articulation. I’ve been seasoned
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