Carrying the Water: On Michael Eric Dyson

Is Michael Eric Dyson the intellectual equivalent of a poverty pimp? Or is he in the best tradition Black public intellectualism?







Carrying the Water
by Mark Anthony Neal

Recently, one of my colleagues jokingly referred to Michael Eric Dyson’s Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip-Hop, as the latest offering in the Michael Eric Dyson “book-of-the-month-club”. It was a grudging, though derisive, admission of Dyson’s level of productivity as an author.

Know What I Mean?, which is largely a collection of conversations that Dyson has had over the past few years, represents his fourteenth publication in just as many years. His first collection of essays, Reflecting Black (University of Minnesota Press) was published in 1993. Since January of 2005, Dyson has published texts on Hurricane Katrina, one of the seven deadly sins (Pride), the specter of race in contemporary American political discourse and, of course, on Bill Cosby’s rhetorical “drive-by” on the Black poor.

Given Dyson’s prolific output and heightened visibility, it should not be surprising that some of his peers within the academy accuse him of pandering to the marketplace, while many outside of the academy view him as little more than a race hustler. The same goes for Dyson’s proclivity for movement from one elite institution to another. The publication of Know What I Mean? coincided with the announcement that Dyson had accepted a new position as university professor at Georgetown University. In contrast to this so-called conventional wisdom, I’d like to suggest that for nearly two decades, Dyson has carried the water, not only for the principles of being a civically engaged scholar and intellectual, but for the field of African-American Studies and its many mutations, including the burgeoning field of hip-hop studies.

As such, this is as much meant to defend Michael Eric Dyson, as it is meant to defend the vocation that he, as well as many others, have brilliantly upheld with guile, intelligence, passion and an unwavering commitment to issues of social justice. So for a moment let’s assume that Michael Eric Dyson is the intellectual equivalent of an ambulance chaser. But we’re not talking about nefarious accident lawyers and tow-truck drivers, who lay in wait to profit from the misfortunes of others, but an Ivy-League trained scholar, author and public thinker of some distinction.

The recurring presumption here is that Dyson’s public profile and celebrity are some how premised on his exploitation of the misery of the Black folk he ostensibly represents. This widely circulated and decidedly worn “poverty pimp” thesis has been applied to figures as diverse as Reverend Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, and the current cadre of hip-hop generation intellectuals, who supposedly, as the critique goes, wallow in victimization and refuse to hold the Black rank-and-file, particularly Black youth, accountable for bad behavior. This chorus from the choir of “common sense” populism holds merit merely for those who refuse to value the labor of those whose mode of activism is best realized via corporate media (including the publishing houses) and elite universities, and who leverage the resources of those institution to do the work of social justice. The populism of common sense suggest that the attainment of wealth and celebrity could be the only motivations for trafficking in the marketplace of ideas.

Read the Full Essay @ SeeingBlack.com