Is Dyson Right?
In his new book, University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson takes Bill Cosby to task for his criticisms of the Black poor.
By Ronald Roach
Since the 1990s, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson has emerged as one of the most visible and widely read scholars on topics relating to African-American life and society. The Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Dyson counts himself as one of many African-Americans who found comedian Bill Cosby’s May 17, 2004, tirade against the Black poor demeaning, misleading and destructive.
Ever the socially engaged public scholar, Dyson has recently authored Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?, whose publication comes just one year after Cosby’s infamous speech. To produce Is Bill Cosby Right? Dyson interrupted work on a book on pride, which will be part of a series on the seven deadly sins to be published by Oxford University Press.
Since late spring, sales of Is Bill Cosby Right? have catapulted the Basic Civitas Books-published volume onto the best seller lists in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Dallas Morning News. Dyson reports that the book has gotten him the widest media exposure he’s ever received for one of his books. Other popular Dyson books include Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur and Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X.
