by Michael Eric Dyson
The copy of Tears We Cannot Stop I read has two review quotes on the back of the dust jacket. The first is from Toni Morrison, giving the book her stamp of approval. The second is from Stephen King, admitting that he badly needed to hear what the book has to say. The two quotes are a good reflection of the book’s context and aim: rooted in the eloquent clarity for which Black writers like Morrison are known; addressed to white people who, after all this time, still need to be told what we should have learned a long time ago.
In his opening, Dyson explains that he wrote Tears as a sermon, because it wouldn’t come out any other way. What follows is a short, fierce, unapologetic, but somehow loving appeal to white progressives, asking us to recognize that we still have a massive amount of learning to do, that we are still causing damage to Black people even as we pat ourselves on the back for helping them.
Dyson structures the book liturgically, with a call to worship, a hymn reading, an invocation, a scripture reading, the main sermon, a benediction, and even a passing of the offering plate. But Dyson has no intent to fill his service with traditional content. His chosen hymns are lyrics by KRS-One, Jay-Z, Tupac Shakur, and Beyoncé. His scripture is taken from the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The offering plate comes in the form of a call for racial reparations in our country.
And the sermon, the bulk of the book, is primarily a prophetic lament and a call to repentance. In it, Dyson speaks directly to his white audience, addressing us as “beloved” throughout. And he has some very difficult, very painful things to say. “Beloved, let me start by telling you an ugly secret,” he writes. “There is no such thing as white people. And yet so many of them, so many of you, exist. Please hear me out. I know you’re flesh and blood, I know you use language and forks and knives . . . [but] you don’t get whiteness from your genes. It is a social inheritance that is passed on to you as a member of a particular group. And it’s killing us, and, quiet as it’s kept, it’s killing you too.”
“Beloved, let me start by telling you an ugly secret,” he writes.
Dyson’s primary lament, at least in my reading, is that despite all of our “good intentions,” despite the many ways, so heavily celebrated, that we appear to “getting it,” white progressives still refuse to give up our whiteness. We continue to impose our white standards, our white worldview, and our white ambitions on everything around us, even when we think we’re trying to do the opposite. He doesn’t hold back from using examples that many authors wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pen. His examination of the “N word” and the absurdity of white peoples’ belief that we’re able to correctly judge Black peoples’ use of it in art, music, literature and everyday conversation is the written equivalent of a hard, swift, unexpected smack on the backside of the head.
But Dyson’s appeal has a positive, forward-looking tone to it. If we can be more humble, if we can get out of our own way, if we can start focusing less on being amazing white saviours and focus more on repenting of our whiteness and surrendering it and the comfort and privilege it gives us, there is hope for an effective new interracial movement of justice.
This was a hard book to read. Several times I found myself unsure if I agreed with Dyson while at the same time recognizing I wasn’t equipped to make any kind of a valid counter argument. After a while, I tried to let go and just allow the words to do their work. I think “letting go” was what the author had in mind for his audience.
ISBN: 9781250135995
Binding: Hardcover
Publication date: 01/17/2017
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Pages: 240
Author: Michael Eric Dyson
