Dr. Michael Eric Dyson | Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel | Howard University

[Music] okay good morning thank you okay thank you this is the day that the lord has made let us be glad in your choice of the lord we're going to show thee what is good and what does the lord requires me but to do just me to love mercy and to walk humbly with our god good morning we welcome you this morning to the andrew rancho memorial chapel here on the yard of howard university and we can thank president and our administration for providing the resources that we can come together in worship during these political times we're going to ask um the cynthia realtor to come at this time and guide us through our service 10 seconds good morning again chapel family we will now ask shantan williams the chapel assistant's president to come and light our unity candidates now please welcome christopher bonner he is a graduate assistant in the office of the demonstrator chapel and he will be giving us this morning's scripture and then we will have a selection from the andrew rankin memorial chapel fire directed by dr eric poole this scripture reading will be coming from psalm 19 through 14 from the new revised standard verse it reads up the law of the lord is perfect reviving the soul the decrees of the lord are sure making wise the precepts of the lord are right rejoicing the heart the commandment of the lord is clear enlightening the eyes the fear of the lord is pure and doing forever the ordinances of the lord are true and pure enduring forever righteous altogether more to be desired or laid in gold even much findable sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb about them is your servant and keep me down there is great reward but who can detect their enemies clear me from hitting faults keep back your servant also from the instrument do not let them have dominion over me then i shall be blameless and innocent of transgression let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you oh lord my rock and robert this is the word of god um [Music] [Music] crazy [Music] jesus [Music] [Applause] [Music] crazy [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] jesus christ me [Music] [Applause] [Music] to jesus [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] lazy [Applause] [Music] [Music] he's [Music] me [Applause] no matter what i'm trying to do [Music] oh my jesus he's the king of peace and the lord of god [Music] is [Music] [Music] we talking about is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey man amen um you can see that kovic has really is still disrupting my lives right now but we are trying to make the best of it um unicode of course we've had to eliminate right now our brunch series but we still wanted to have time for students and community to connect with our speakers so if you will join us afterwards for a short talk uh chat with dr dyson um just please return to the tent if you want to stay um we also have disrupted of course our offering and so we're not doing in-person offering but if you would still like to support the functions of the chapel financially you can do so by scanning the qr code at the bottom of your order service or you can go online to giving.howard.edu rankin chapel um if you are worshiping with us online there will be a link in your chat box which you can that you can go to before we have this morning's greetings i just want to take a moment to thank the various student groups who work with us each week to have chapel service last week we had beacon liturgical dance ministry they truly anchored our service online last year and then they continue to remind us of the resiliency of the student body here at howard we also have the spotlight network who you will see all around the tent filming and they are just moving here early every morning getting us prepared we also of course have the channel assistants who you will see at various points throughout service i mean who work so diligently so can we all just take a moment and just thank these students [Applause] we are truly blessed to be able to worship with you all week to week now i want you to welcome chancellor williams the howard university chapel assistant's present president who will give us this morning's screens [Applause] good morning chapel family my name is chantal williams and i serve as the president of the chapel assistance we had an amazing field trip last friday to the national portrait gallery flooded by darianna davis and joylynn keaton this friday please join us for our karaoke night food will be provided if you'd like to learn more about the chapel assistance and events we host please follow us on instagram and twitter at ca underscore underscore howard you and join the group we'll all chapel assistants please stand we will be in the back of the tent after service feel free to ask us any questions join the office of the dean of the chapel for wellness wednesdays on the yard a weekly 30-minute wellness booster beginning at 12 15 this wednesday student leadership commissioning is on sunday october 3rd at 11am student leader commissioning is a time for the entire high university community to welcome new student leaders into the legacy of leadership at here at hu this year our theme is reimagining community and we are excited to have president william a.i frederick as our speaker today we have a call to chapel from the ladies of the chapter delta sigma data sorority incorporated and the national council of negro women power section please come at this time thank you and have an amazing week [Applause] cool incorporated we would like to formally invite you to our 2021 delta week entitled soleil saying lean outlook leveraging education for impactful leadership our week begins with today's call to chapel and will end on saturday october 2nd 2021. please join us for the first program of delta week entitled influence heard building and monetizing your personal brand on monday september 27th at 7 13 pm with the 2021 delta week committee please stand would all soars initiated at alpha chapter delta sigma theta sorority incorporated please stand [Applause] would all members of delta sigma sororities incorporated please stand [Applause] we would like to extend an invitation to join us immediately following chapel around the black hole on the main yard for a moment of prayer thank you so hello my name is crystal cuomo a senior sports medicine major chemistry and biology minor from atlanta georgia and i serve as this year's second vice president of national council of national council of new younger women good morning my name is jonathan glantz i am a senior biology major chemistry minor from baltimore maryland and i serve as this year's president for the national capital people women's power section on behalf of national council of new girlwoman howard section we would like to cordially invite you to participate in our week titled her week 2021. our people convey messages of physical health mental health branding and more details will be born on our social media so please follow us on instagram at ncnw howard the first event titled megan monday will be up tomorrow at 7 00 pm dsm registration details will be in our bio we hope to see you all there will the executive board members of national council of legal women have receptions please stand [Applause] now all members of the national council of legal women power sessions please stand thank you let us now prepare our hearts and our minds through prayer let us be still before our god there are many approaches to prayers as we sit and say to ourselves some approaches that after the fact that he over the years is coming from mr eckhart i said he says that there's a place in the soul that neither time no space nor any created thing can touch donald donahue takes it even farther he says your identity is not equivalent to your biography and that there's a place in you where you've never been wounded where there's still uh sureness to you there's a seamlessness in you and when there's a confidence in your tranquility in you and the intention of praying is to every now and again visit that inner kind of sanctuary this morning as we prepare ourselves for prayer we want to visit that place a place where you don't have to prove yourself just like to be yourself it's a place where you will sense a larger belonging [Music] place will you be reminded that you are more than what you are allowing to take for me your joy your confidence or your hope let us visit that place now as we prepare our hearts and our minds oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] most gracious and loving god before any human hands touched us you already knew us [Music] you are closer to us than even our own thoughts [Music] so you know god that there are moments moments when we feel anonymous we feel anonymous because no one is calling our names holding our hands or affirming our dreams or even making us feel like we mad [Music] we confessed to you this morning that [Music] in these moments are our insecurities and our weaknesses sometimes the people around us but we want from them what only you can give us and what you have already given us [Music] but there are moments of god there are moments when we even question you we wonder lord if you if you really do have a hope for us [Music] and you have a dream for us [Music] we can say these things to your god for you know our hearts and you can handle our questions you understand our weaknesses [Music] you will not condemn us when we are weak instead you will strengthen us we need your strength [Music] we ask oh god when we [Music] when we find ourselves faltering from life's pressures [Music] when we find it hard to believe in ourselves or even trust ourselves when we search within and find nothing but guilt and look beyond and feel and see no one who understands those moments of god remind us that we are not alone and that you were with us even while our own hearts are trying to condemn us and guilt us and harass us you can overcome [Music] that your love is greater your love is greater than into us moments of god help us it was just a pause even in this moment lord help us help us to pause and by faith believe that we can hear you calling our names kill you holding our hands sense you affirming our dreams and telling us that we do matter [Music] to trust ourselves believe in ourselves to stop trying to prove ourselves instead just help us to love ourselves to love as you love [Music] patiently with kindness not keeping the record of all that is wrong with us love that protects that trust that hopes in the love that perseveres [Music] we give you now we give you all the big and small matters of our lives [Music] we give you the people in our lives who need more than we can provide we get to you the situations that are that [Music] of loneliness and abandonment [Music] the racism the bigotry and the greed running members in our sick nation we're still going to trust you may our illnesses we're going to trust that you will you will heal us and you will lead us in and guide us through these troubling [Music] hold us times lord hold us in your love until we learn how to love in your name we pray um [Music] [Music] chances [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes [Music] yes [Music] [Applause] yes [Music] we are indeed blessed this morning to have as our preacher dr michael eric dyson dr dyson is one of the nation's most renowned professors gifted writers inspiring preachers knowledgeable media personality i give god thanks for his gifts i gave god thanks for his friendship i was telling dr dyson this morning that i received a number of phone calls and inquiries about dr dyson they said where is your friend michael dyson we haven't heard from him and we need to hear his voice during these critical times and dr dyson was incognito because he was writing his new book entertaining race performing blackness in america which will be released in november 2nd i believe it is and is getting rave reviews all over the world we give god thanks that dr dyson is with us every year for at least 27 years and he is truly a friend he is a person who has such a tremendous gift but also a tremendous heart i literally this is the truth i literally have to call on my chaplains to say no to him because wherever he sees chapel assistance he buys them lunch and dinner and all those kinds of things but he and marcia his wife have given a number of scholarships and donations to our students over the years he's just one who has a tremendous heart so i want to you me do me a favor i want you to just stand for a moment and give god thanks for dr michael eric dyson and following following the selection from the chapel choir and we're indeed blessed this morning to have solaris miss francis brooks who also has been with us for many many many years following the selection from the chapel choir we will be blessed to experience the preaching and the teaching of michael eric dyson praise the lord everybody praise the lord everybody hallelujah [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] as a general rule but specifically during these difficult times i think it's good to remember that there's no one in the entire universe that can compare to our jesus is that right so this song is entitled no not one there's not a friend like the lordly jesus no [Music] can heal all of our souls all our souls diseases no not even one [Music] no friend like him is so very high and holy not one no not one and yet no friend is so meek and lowly no not one no not one [Music] there's not an hour that he is not near us no [Music] not one no night so dark that his love can't cheer us no not even one no [Music] a gift like our savior [Music] not one no not one [Laughter] [Applause] the bliss of a home in heaven [Music] no [Music] and he will god [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we bow our heads we thank you o lord for the majesty of this moment for the sweetness of this hour and for the renewed appreciation for gathering in the midst of your people now continue to bless us keep us safe from all hurt harm and danger seen and unseen and from viruses both physical mental moral and spiritual and allow us to stand in your stead to say what you would have us to say and to do what you would have us to do bless this dean who continues to extend his arms hold him up and allow him to tell the truth in season and out now there is no word in my tongue that thou dost not know all together so may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight o lord my strength and my redeemer amen to dean richardson to these extraordinary pulpit associates and assistants and to this great choir to all the members of the chapel to all of you my brothers and sisters ladies and gentlemen boys and girls good morning good morning what a what a great joy it is to be back here at howard and to be outside on the main campus through the main gate under the tent like old time revival this is uh such a a joy and i'm always honored when the dean invites me to come back no matter how poorly i do the year before i have a return assignment and an engagement and so i'm grateful you all know how that is you might flunk one class but you don't want to get denied your degree and despite my flunking he allows me to return and i'm so grateful uh always grateful that it's before freddie haynes comes up in here and just tears this church down um and so many others howard john wesley and so many others who come through here but what an honor it is to be with this great man of god uh dean bernard richardson as you already know is one of the great mystics poets prophets analysts of the spirit and of the mind and i'm grateful to call him my mentor my guardian my guide he sends me texts randomly just to check on me ain't nothing better than a random text that's positive not a tweet not a facebook post not an instagram i ain't mad at none of that mostly but uh it is it is good in this era of such viciousness to have such unmitigated positivity and uplift of the spirit as dean richardson so let's acknowledge his genius and stand on your feet to give this man his just do and i forgot to tell you as a fellow lakers fan we looking good this year dean lebron done slimmed down yeah i know they old but old people do stuff too y'all out here talking about we owe try to get there try to get some of this gray hair right stop dying yours i i'm i'm just saying i just you know but but yeah we old but we got skill y'all might get there faster but we stay there longer man old people we learn old tricks we can't jump as high and we can't thrill you but we can satisfy you with the substance of our conviction an apologia for old people and uh thankful that the lakers gonna win the championship this year as all you haters out there and we're fellow kobe lovers we hung out with kobe a bit we still miss him dean what a great man but it's great to be here and it was good to uh to hear this great choir and the akas who were here this morning oh i'm sorry the zeta phi betas the zeta five oh is that oh okay okay okay i i guess it was the y'all give positive meaning to the delta variant every time i hear that you know when you're a negro delta's what they done done what what did they they did this well i tell you what if it's a delta variant like the deltas i know that means salvation and redemption is being spread beauty power and brilliance as well [Applause] [Laughter] i forgot y'all be proprietary about these gangs of sororities and fraternities bmf is coming out soon so join the crowd but what an honor it is to be here uh in fact i was reading a delta the corey minor smith her book hashtag driven where she says don't let undesirable circumstances be excuses for you to fail but allow them to be reasons for you to excel so that's some brilliance from our delta sisters so glad to see them up in here this morning with all of you and um i want to get right to the uh scripture because i'm looking forward to the conversation uh back and forth and out here in the tent out here in the open air we can just air it out a little bit and have a good old time in the lord now i want to read for you from a passage of scripture that is familiar to you out of exodus the 34th chapter and i'll read the 33rd through the 36th verses the 33rd through the 36th verses out of exodus and i'll read from the new international version and there you will find these words when moses finished speaking to them he put a veil over his face but whenever he entered the lord's presence to speak with him he removed the veil until he came out and when he came out and told the israelites what he had been commanded they saw that his face was radiant then moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the lord now i want to talk to you for very few minutes this morning about when not to wear your mask when not to wear your mask we know that we're living in tough times the coronavirus covet 19 has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives here millions around the globe and one of the debates has been about how best to prevent the spread of that virus and one of the solutions that the cdc put forward is that we ought to wear masks now see a lot of y'all listen to the cdc because y'all got masks on right now ain't that something ain't that just like god that what used to look like a stick up kid what they assumed we as black people might be want to do commit crime wearing a mask now everybody got to wear them so that god drains the stereotype out of symbolic expressions that black people were unfairly associated with to redeem the world through what we were forced to bear that's just how it often happens anyway it goes down like that so so it has become however controversial for people to wear masks you would think that it makes common sense you got a virus you got a pandemic what they called in the 1990s a syndemic a convergence of two pandemics one a virus another a vicious repudiation of blackness through anti-blackness you would think that that everything would be good and that people would know based on science that we should wear mass but i live down in tennessee now teaching it at vanderbilt and i'll tell you that it's controversial to some folk as to whether or not they should wear a mask they have turned science into stereotype and mythology i'm confused because we were told throughout our history that we weren't scientific enough that we didn't study that we didn't get educated that we didn't take the principles and practices of empiricism seriously that that the scientific methodology that was used to substantiate the claim that we were inferior that we were intellectually incapable of producing highly cerebral acts even thomas jefferson in his notes on virginia said that negroes lack the requisite skills to engage in sophisticated rationale he even doubted whether or not black people could produce harmony in their music i don't know what he was listening to he could have gone to the supremes to destiny's child and to sweet inspiration to know we do harmony and yet and yet the very scientific premise that has been used to argue our inherent inferiority our biological determinism to be less than what is measured up to by dominant white supremacist culture now they done rejected the very science that they claim was the basis of their superiority as europeans and white folk in america i'm confused how come the science work then but don't be working now how come science because science by its nature is supposed to have a kind of unyielding objectivity that is to put forth notions of truth that are not biased by human cognition or prejudicial thinking all of a sudden they done thrown science out the door and it's all about politics y'all live in dc y'all know what happened on january 6th y'all saw what you all own eyes what what happens when people in the embrace of ideology and politics repudiate conceptions of democracy indeference to white supremacist thinking that makes the real religion in america whiteness the real truth in america white the real people who are citizens white the real religion whiteness and the real science the projection of a pigmented pedigree of personal identity that rests upon not being black now i'm confused because at the end of the day if you don't believe the scientific principles because you think they have been seduced by democrats in the country and right and left-wing folk and woke rats folks still dying every day and the people who are loudly promoting anti-vaccination some of them are dying too and despite the science they are in the embrace of a belief that leads them to conclude that mask wearing is a projection of ideological intimacy with progressive ideas that are anti-american no on the one hand you get that's just cray cray out of the order but the reason this is serious for us is because that sometimes converges with vaccination hesitancy hesitancy on the part of black folk that be a different thing the hesitancy we got is premised upon the fact that science which was supposed to be objective and neutral got deployed against vulnerable black bodies in experiments we weren't consenting to i don't need to mention what happened with tuskegee for y'all to know that you don't have to read dr washington's book about medical apartheid to understand that you could have the same amount of money 150 000 a year as a white person but you go into the doctor's office with the same ailment say a heart trouble they will more aggressively intervene for the white person than the black person even controlling for economics that's because the mythology of black bodies suggests that we are able to endure more pain than anybody else so even in the midst of the science we knew that we weren't worshiping science because science could be deployed in defense of prejudice positions and philosophies that challenge the humanity of black folk so we ain't bowing down to the altar of science uncritically supporting what comes out of the cdc but at the end of the day we also understand we got to test it for ourselves and trust our own instincts after scientifically trying to adjudicate that is decide between competing claims about what's good and bad i start there i say all that because when we argue about these masks many of our brothers and sisters on the right have denied the legitimacy of the very principles by which they claim to abide and the democracy they claim to support and our hesitancy is based upon the fact that despite you saying you love democracy you didn't like it for us this is why we see voter id laws being put forth right now that would deny black people and brown people and poor people the right to vote the right in this sense that that you can have a gun permit and that will be legitimate forms of id but not a student id that you can't show your welfare your your your support card uh in this country to be a reliable source of identification nor your employer's id for the state which are disproportionately black and brown in this era and yet we are able to show our gun license as the basis for voting in this country and when you think about the fact that black people living rural when you think about the fact that black people don't have the ability to get the underlying documents social the the the way in which their social security documents are put forth their birth certificates are put forth the way in which these things cost anywhere from 75 to 175 dollars and that may not sound like much to y'all but for those who are poor and working poor who don't have the ability to make ends meet that is nearly prohibitive so when you put all that stuff together the denial of the franchise the black people is the basis for so much of the anti-democratic small d impulse of the far right wing that claims to be in the embrace of democracy but ain't interested in it for everybody else now my brothers and sisters wearing a mask seems to be common sense seems to be driven by science seems to be the thing to do now for some black people who say i don't trust that i don't know what's in it you're eating you're eating food you don't know what's in it you're smoking weed and you don't know all this in it i know most of y'all don't even know what that means but for those for whom that's relevant medical marijuana to help you with your dis-ease and anxiety you don't know what's in that you don't know what's in a lot of stuff i'm not saying just take anything into your body without without questioning it but i'm saying at the end of the day use science to defend principles of common sense and the health of black people because we are disproportionately dying from this disease and virus underlying conditions of heart disease and of arthritis to a certain degree with inflammatory systems and medicines taking rendering our bodies more vulnerable when we think about the asthma when we think about the diabetes those underlying conditions with pre-existing conditions that we have and those of racial inequity that continue to render our access to routine health care problematic now i ain't given no commercial for the cdc i'm just telling you black people don't be subject to all these conspiracy theories out here that gonna tell you about why you shouldn't do that while black people are dying in disproportionate numbers now in this part by saying this with tuskegee they were withholding the medicine and in this case they're trying to give it a moderna is from a black woman kismekia corbett 33 34 years old studied up the road here in maryland now teaching at harvard at least trust the black woman who is a stone cold christian to believe that she ain't gonna advise y'all to do nothing that ain't healthy no disrespect to nicki minaj and nicki minaj had a point she said study it for yourself i love nicki minaj i think she's one of the most gifted rappers ever but after studying it draw the conclusion that this thing could help you and not hurt you let me get to the scripture this morning moses is out here having gone up to the mountaintop to converse with god the first time he came down he got mad threw them tablets away and he had to go back and for those who don't believe in revision of biblical literature moses is standing right before you first time he came down he cracked them up and got upset mad preachers cannot be reliable interpreters of god's divine wisdom and some preachers mad at you because and i get it they manage your human sin the very one they got they manage your limitation the very one that you got so moses had to go back again and when he went back this time he it's the word says he put a mask on a veil on in the face of god because he had to filter that shekinah spirit he had to filter the radiance of the pure ecstasy of being in god's presence but he took the mask off right he put it on when he was with others but before god because of that radiance he took his mask off and he took that mask off because he could trust god because god would not hurt him he had to filter it when he was dealing with human beings but before god he had to unmask himself and i want to tell you don't be lying to god it don't make no difference no way god be knowing the truth but some of us lying to god praying and you know you lying praying about what you want praying about what you desire praying about what you want to become praying about what you've done at least we should have the ability to tell god the truth unmask before god isn't it true what paul lawrence dunbar said we wear the mask he said grinning and lying and we wear those masks because we have to lie to white folk about how we were feeling how we doing today boss we doing fine we had to lie in order to keep building up those instruments of revolution and we didn't want to give away the truth so we wore the mask for dominant white culture but when you before god unmask yourself take off your mass take off your self righteousness take off your belief that you have to be perfect you don't have to be perfect before the almighty the great theologian grace jones said i may not be perfect but i'm perfect for you and so before god we take off our masks we unmask ourselves before the almighty because god stitched us into the womb of our mother god formed us as unformable ideals in god's own mind you are the physical and biological manifestation of god's belief for your destiny and desire for who you are to become so when you're dealing with god unmask yourself it seems to me too that that moses said but but when i'm dealing with other people i got to put my mask on and we put our mask on because we're dealing in a culture where we can't afford to tell the truth they already think we're angry and we're upset so we can't act angry and upset we tell women not to have a resting face we tell them to act and smile in a certain way because they have to pretend that they feel things that they don't feel we have been told from the beginning of our history here that we have to wear a mask and we did wear a mask and the reason we wore a mask is to do things long enough to survive long enough to rebel to resist to create opportunities in our own community before we were massacred or eradicated or wiped out deleted or destroyed from a dominant culture we water mass we laugh when it wasn't funny we smiled when we were crying in our hearts we were joyous in our lives and department when there was grief in our communities we were forced to wear that mask and some of us still today we got to wear the mask we can't go to work and tell the boss what we really think we can't tell white folk when they ask us we want to be an ally can you help us out can you tell the truth you can't really handle that truth even when black folk telling the truth we still doing it about 75 percent we still withholding 25 because we know white fragility and white tears is the predicate for so much unborn terror in america the discomfort of whiteness has led to the destruction of blackness and brownness and indigenous identity white fragility has murdered so many of us so what we end up doing we end up lying to white folk because they can't handle the truth like jack nicholson on a few good men you can't handle the truth if black folk were to tell you what do you think about us we think most of y'all who are karen's are crazy we think you ain't got no skill you got no ability to get along but you want to run our crib you want to tell our kids what to do you want to be able to tell us when we can drink water or sell lemonade or eat barbecue you want to tell us when we can go to starbucks and when we can sit down and stand up minding your own business ain't on your agenda your crib is all destroyed your your household is full of domestic and tranquility and yet you have the unmitigated god to try to tell black folk what to do as if you are the expert you are experts at destroying american civilization undercutting the black family and if it's misbehaving part of it's got to be laid at your feet instead we say we're fine how are you can i touch your hair you know what we want to say his hell to the nizo can we use the n-word tell you what this is what i told a white person when they had asked me that i unmasked just a little bit because i can't take my mask off because the fury i would direct i said i tell you what let's make a deal all of white america transfers its collective wealth to black bank accounts and for 24 hours you can say the n words and after that it ain't no more if you give us all the dough you got i will be your for 24 hours and you can say it as much as you want while you cleaning your teeth while you under arming yourself while you going on your boat trip just have a good old inward time but if we got all your dough all of your assets all of your wealth then we gonna test out to see if you can do what you've been telling us to do oh it doesn't make a difference if you don't have health care it doesn't wow you're up in the senate while you're up in the congress with health care you're telling us that you want to uh you want to keep women from aborting their babies you have aborted truth you have aborted democracy you have aborted righteousness you have aborted real religion so instead of it i say well i wouldn't recommend that you use the n-word i don't want to get you killed out here because jamal or sally out in the street and shaniqua's sister too ain't going to have much understanding for you going out here calling us the n word and why do you have such a lust to use a term of derision because you see black people in their own communities and a lot of you all here of course disagree with even black people doing it but when black people appropriate that term why is it that you want to believe that you have the right to do so it is because whiteness's ultimate desire is to destroy and eradicate everything that is not itself and to do so it will use any tool at its disposal to reinforce its supremacy and power and determination of our lives we wear the mask because we know that had that been us on january 6th going to a capital to tell folk how mad we was when the election's turnout was determined by legitimate voting we know that if we had tried to storm nancy pelosi's office we know that if we had tried to get through there would have been hundreds of black people shot murdered and massacred on the mall and in congress and on capitol hill we know what that is and so i say to you my brothers and sisters take off that mass when you're talking to god and take off that mass when you're talking to each other moses couldn't afford to take off his mass with people because he knew their limitations but at some point we got to say as black people we got to love each other enough to receive the truth of who we are in the full range of our blackness we make gay people wear masks keep them in the closet trans people don't want to tell their truth and here we are being victims of white supremacy and we turn around and reinforce heterosexism paulie murray who was a graduate of this great institution who before thurgood marshall and charles hamilton houston talked about dismantling jim crow and she said i'm a victim of jane crow too in terms of gender she wrote a paper in law school at howard and they ignored her because she was a woman and then later on they used that paper as the basis of dismantling jim crow with brown versus board of education we make people mask themselves even among our own community because they don't have the politics of respectability they wearing bonnets at the airport in house shoes and i know that disturbs some of our bourgeois consciousness we got to check ourselves what in the world is you doing and i'm not arguing that everything is all right all the time i'm saying however we got to check and unmask the ways in which we have internalized dominant supremacist thinking and values and articulated them as legitimate morays and and folk ways for african people in america and we have to be able to tell the truth to each other and to love each other enough to hear the full range of blackness you don't have the ultimate determination of what truly black being black is you only been black all your life that don't mean you're the only person who've been black all your life black people do all kind of stuff you think black people don't do and so we've got to continually challenge the internal policing of blackness in our own community the black derrick children's that would put their knees on the necks of offending black people black people who would handcuff the free expression of identity that black people in recognition of their full exploration of their identities put forth finally you ought to unmask for your therapist too don't make no no sense to go to therapy if you got the ability to go and be lying about what you doing the whole point of therapy is to unmask is to tell the truth about who you are and the ugly parts of us and this is why and i'm sorry every year i come here lately i talk about cancer culture because i don't know who can really stand ultimately against cancer culture when you the cancer today and the cancer lead tomorrow my bible tells me that all have sinned some of our sins are more evident than others some of us messing up in ways that are pretty apparent but some of us who are judging the ones who have apparent sins got sense too you just mask them differently and so cancel culture i'm not talking about being held accountable we should as men if metoo has taught us anything it is that when the centuries have been denied legitimacy as agents of their own destiny sexually morally spiritually politically financially and economically we know that women are consistently subject to vicious forms of patriarchy that domestic violence and abuse are real it ain't just gabby potito a lot of women in our own community being viciously mistreated sexually degraded assaulted and harassed that must end but our ultimate goal must be about restorative justice and about redemption because ultimately what we understand is that all of us have a flaw a sin a failure and we need grace and forgiveness i don't know about y'all i do not my mother not my father but it's me o lord standing in the need of prayer and so when you go to your therapist instead of turning to drugs instead of turning to alcohol instead of turning to social media instead of judging people as part of a digital mob we didn't like it when black people were in jail allegedly having committed a crime that many of us knew was not true and then the lynch mob came and said we're going to execute justice right here we ain't waiting for no trial we're going to murder them right here and how many black men and women were lynched because of a mob justice based on mere allegation without having the ability to have justice and so i warn young people against that you judging somebody for what they did when they were 13 and they now 33. it's been frozen first of all be careful what you tell your kids to put on that dadgum twitter machine and what you saying because unfairly or not imagine if twitter was around when some of y'all were young some of the stuff you said some of the stuff you had done done would now come to light and can you imagine being judged by something 20 years ago have you changed have you evolved have you matured have you moved beyond that that's why so many of us demanding vengeance in the place of justice will refuse to unmask the truth of who we are so when you go to your therapy and black folk ought to have therapy all i need is jesus no negro jesus then gave you the name of good three therapists that you need to check out jesus said i made them too and your butt needs to go to fair roughy now take my seat so that's when you don't wear no masks in your intimate relationships with your loved ones with your wife or husband your partner and you pretending you one thing and then you are scared that they see who you really are they will run they will pack up and leave they will abandon you because in your unmitigated expression of yourself it is too offensive and reprehensible but you got to take that risk you ain't got no real relationship until all the ugly parts come company with all the beautiful parts and when the ugly and the beautiful get together they produce a relationship and that relationship is built upon trust and love and acknowledgement that we have all failed and we are all full of flaws but ultimately we have a person who will love us regardless or as we say irregardless will love us anyhow that's why i love god i i must tell you as i take my seat that's when you unmask keep your mask on out in society keep your mask on when you're dealing with the covet virus keep your mask on as you're trying to protect your loved ones and put your mask on when you're trying to bring health and healing to this nation but take your mask off when you stand before your loved ones when you stand before your community and when you stand before your therapist and when you stand before god because that ultimately is the only way to bring moral and spiritual healing to a nation but especially to ourselves this i offer in the name of the one who loves us so much that we can tell the truth of who we are because that god created us [Applause] [Applause] thank you dr dyson let us stand for the benediction everyone is welcome to join us after the receiving line proceeds we will be back in the tent to have an open discussion with dr dyson [Music] we thank you oh god for what eyes have seen [Music] we thank you for what our years have heard we thank you for what our hearts have felt we thank you for the ministry of dr michael eric dyson and now i said to the one who stood at the gate give me a light that i may go out into the darkness and into the unknown and she replied to me go out into the darkness go out into the unknown [Music] but put your hand in the hand of god and god shall be for you better than light and much safer than a known way may the lord bless you and keep you may the lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace both now and forevermore [Music] amen [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] ah [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Rankin Chapel

Views: 1,906

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Id: nqnk9x2DFO4

Length: 81min 6sec (4866 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021