Rev. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of sociology at Georgetown University and an ordained Baptist minister who has written 20 books on race, civil rights, music, and American society, including the 2017 bestseller, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. He has contributed to The New York Times, The New Republic, Time magazine, and ESPN. Ebony magazine has named him one of the 150 Most Influential African Americans in the nation.

And he begins many of his sentences like this: “When I was interviewing President Obama...” or “Jesse Jackson once told me ...” or “I was talking with Lin-Manuel Miranda the other day ...” Yet when he visited Northfield Mount Hermon and sat down with a couple dozen students for a question-and-answer session, he spoke with them as if they were the luminaries.

It was intimidating at first. “He’s a professor at Georgetown, he has a Ph.D. from Princeton — there are so many things that put him so high up in the social hierarchy we have in the U.S.,” says Melvin Mercado Bulacio, a junior. “But I dropped my fear immediately after our first words with him, because he was really welcoming. He made the conversation feel like a shared dynamic, like we were equals.”

As the highlight of a week of events honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dyson delivered a keynote address to the whole school community in Memorial Chapel, and held forth at a dinner in Ford Cottage hosted by Head of School Peter Fayroian. Before those events, though, came the student Q&A. Illustrating his points with recitations of rap lyrics, Dyson shared his thoughts about social justice, politics, hip-hop, and his journey from high school dropout to college professor.

(The following questions and responses have been edited and condensed.)

How did you feel about school growing up?

I was always curious as a child, but when I was young in Detroit, I would skip school to go to the library because I knew I was getting a sub-par education. I’m making a distinction between schooling and education. Education is a lifelong thing; it’s what you do because you’re curious about the world around you.

So I read a bunch of stuff. I won spelling bees in fourth and fifth grade, an oratorical contest in seventh grade. I discovered James Baldwin. And later, Toni Morrison. I went went from an inner-city Detroit high school to a private school — Cranbrook — but I got kicked out and ended up graduating from night school. I got a girl pregnant when I was 18, had a son, worked in a factory, and didn’t go to college until I was 21. Going to school late allowed me to be more serious and focused. I was ravenous; I wanted to learn and I wanted to be able to take criticism. And I got it. I was kicked out of one of the colleges I went to for protesting the lack of black speakers in the chapel. And after I got ordained, I got kicked out of a church I was pastoring because I tried to ordain women deacons. That was in 1983.

But by then I knew my calling was to be a writer. I started writing professionally my second year of graduate school at Princeton — music criticism for the local paper. They sent me CDs, and I wrote for free. It became an obsession that continues to fuel me.

How do you blend hip-hop into your academic work?

I’ve taught a class at Georgetown on Jay-Z. I’ve taught a class on Kendrick Lamar. I’m what Georgetown calls a “university professor,” which basically means you’ve written a lot of books and you have a lot of academic latitude. My course is in the sociology department, so when my students and I talk about Jay-Z, we talk about the projects. Urban space. New York City. Gentrification. Jay says, “God forgive me / for my brash delivery / but I remember vividly / what these streets did to me.” We break down not only the lyrics, but also ideas: fatherlessness, the impact that public policy has on poor neighborhoods, the rise of Ronald Reagan.

Think about Kendrick Lamar’s second album, “good kid, m.A.A.d city.” There was this guy named Reinhold Niebuhr; he was a theologian and public intellectual who went through a lot of phases: He was a Marxist, then a Cold Warrior; then he developed this theory called Christian realism. He wrote a book, Moral Man and Immoral Society. Same idea as “good kid, m.A.A.d city.” Now I’m not saying that Kendrick Lamar read Niebuhr, because I don’t think he did, but that makes the album even more ingenious because Kendrick came up with it on his own.

How much has hip-hop addressed issues of social justice?

One of the earliest raps was a rap of social conscience: “Don’t push me cause I’m close to the edge / I’m tryin’ not to lose my head / It's like a jungle sometimes / It makes me wonder how I keep from going under.” That’s Grandmaster Flash — what was it, 1982?

At the time, hip-hop culture was close to the ground, close to communities. It was seen as a form of hijinks for young kids, so they could blow off steam. Instead of beating each other up, instead of gang warfare, there was breakdancing. Older people hated the music then, but now they’re all nostalgic for it. They’re saying it had substance, it wasn’t misogynistic, it wasn’t all a bunch of obscenities; and it was politically aware.

As hip-hop developed into its golden age, and spread to the West Coast, there was NWA saying, “Police think they have the authority to kill a minority / [messing] with me ‘cause I'm a teenager / with a little bit of gold and a pager.” That was 1988, four years before the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots. Had America been listening to the urgent expression of social pain and trauma from its rappers — its urban scribes — it might not have been surprised by Rodney King.

In 1994 and 1995, there was Nas, cutting his teeth on social conscience: “It’s too dark to see tomorrow.” Think about Paulo Freire, the philosopher who writes about the pedagogy of the oppressed. How do people on the ground — those who are hurt, vulnerable, who have no resources — teach us, in their oppression, about learning and absorbing knowledge and thinking critically about the world around them?

But hip-hop’s social awareness got challenged by every marketable ideal in America. It got seduced. It turned into, How many cars you got? How many big trinkets?

How do you view the conflict that arose in the media between Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates — both powerful Black intellectuals and writers?

It’s not unlike rappers, right? Teachers and preachers like to think they’re better, but they can be haters, too. There are haters everywhere. Human beings are flawed.

I’ve got tremendous love and respect for who West is and his remarkable intellect, but there has been a shift in him, an inability to see other people — younger people — coming along who may be making him look obsolete.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a college dropout, but he’s smokin’ Ivy League professors. Yes, he’s got his own swag; he’s trying to be the best writer in America. But why wouldn’t we want him and the next generation to progress, to go further? With West, I see a resentment of the fame, of the skill, and the way Ta-Nehisi has been greeted by white America.

When you see someone write a beautiful sentence, don’t be mad. Say, “Oh my god, that’s extraordinary.” That’s the difference between envy and jealousy. Envy is, “Man, how did you write that sentence? I wish I had written it.” Jealousy is, “Goddammit, how did you write that sentence? I wish you never had.” Now you’re begrudging someone else’s success.

Look at Jay-Z, who got nominated for eight Grammys this year and he’s 48 years old. He’s still making relevant rap songs, but for him, it’s not about that white-hot moment anymore. He’s got a different mindset: Elevate your skill; be inspired, but stay true to your own game. You’re coming to grips with your vulnerabilities — that’s something an older guy can do that a younger guy can’t. The kind of security a Margaret Atwood has — that may not be the first novel of a younger woman. There are chops you gotta develop, a security that comes through repeated excellence that becomes a habit.

Why has Colin Kaepernick [the San Francisco ’49ers quarterback who, in 2016, began kneeling when the National Anthem was played before football games to protest police brutality against Black people] drawn so much criticism?

Here’s an all-American kind of guy who spoke out through his actions. At first he was sitting during the National Anthem, and Nate Boyer [the former Green Beret and Seattle Seahawks player] told him that was disrespectful. Boyer said, “Why don’t you kneel? That’s a symbol of reverence.” So that’s exactly what Colin Kaepernick did.

You can’t dictate the terms of protest to people who are protesting. That cuts the protest. The inconvenience is the point. It’s like saying, “Could you rebel only between 3 and 5 o’clock?” Imagine saying to George Washington, “You can rebel, but only at a certain time when the queen is not available, and don’t throw the tea overboard, OK?” Colin Kaepernick is on the side of American history and its origins.

Isn’t this what we tell athletes to do? Use your platform, don’t be narcissistic, don’t just worry about your money, help someone else out. The moment Kaepernick does it, he pays a price. The same thing happened to Muhammad Ali. The man protested the war in Vietnam, and got his championship belt taken away. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court sided with him. First he was reviled; then he was celebrated. The stand Kaepernick is taking will someday be seen as one of the most courageous things an American athlete has done. He is literally giving up his career to defend his values and his vision of what should happen in his country.

But you know what? When people are trying to oppress you, it ain’t about your style. It’s you.

How can white people enjoy art and music created by Black people without disrespecting their culture?

Absolutely. The notion of cultural appropriation comes about because of unequal relationships, and who gets to own culture, and how people can take someone else’s culture and make a bunch of money off it while the people who originated it do not. Little Richard can make the song “Tutti-Frutti.” Pat Boone can re-release it and sell millions.

What does Eminem, the white genius from Detroit, say? “If I was Black, I would sell half.” He understands that it’s his whiteness that allows the commodification of Black culture. Black art is packaged, distributed in the marketplace, bought, and consumed, but Eminem, as a white person, innovates within that Black sound — and is received as the greatest expression of it. When political commentator Keith Olberman heard Eminem’s tirade against Donald Trump last year, he said, “Now I get it. Now I see rap is an art.” For real?

But yes, understand that Black art is worthy of appreciation and support. And yes, Jay-Z wants you to buy his album.

What do you think about national politics in America today?

I’d be lying if I said I voted for the man who’s in office right now (2018). But I also had criticisms of the man who occupied the office before he did. I wrote an entire book about it. We should do that with every president. We must always ask questions and challenge each other.

But so many of us continue to believe that if you don’t do it my way — think my way and talk my way — then you are not articulate, or responsible, or intelligent, that you do not express the good character of the American dream. I’m not talking about left versus right, or Republicans versus Democrats. I’m talking about basic humanity. Are you — are we — invested in the humanity of the other?

This story was published in NMH Magazine in 2018.