Michael Eric Dyson + Shaun King + Harry Belafonte

Strand is honored to present Michael Eric Dyson in celebration of his new book, What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America. This book is a follow-up to his bestseller Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, and is another timely exploration of America’s tortured racial politics.

Following his 2017 bestseller Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America highlights a pivotal moment in America’s recent past. In May, 1963 a leading politician ended up learning more than he had bargained for when he asked America’s then hottest writer and his friends over for a chat about black America’s rage. RFK walked away from the nearly three-hour meeting livid – that the black folk assembled didn’t understand politics, and that they weren’t as easy to talk to as Martin Luther King. But Kennedy’s anger quickly gave way to empathy. Kennedy set about changing policy – the meeting having transformed his thinking in fundamental ways. Every big argument about race that persists to this day got a hearing in that room: disdain for black dissent, the belief that black folk wallow in the politics of ingratitude and victimhood, and that they lack hustle and ingenuity.

In What Truth Sounds Like, Dr. Dyson deftly merges this past and our present to explore the tense intersection of the conflict between politics and prophecy – of whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured racial landscape. What Truth Sounds Like examines key players today – ranging from Jay-Z to Jordan Peele and LeBron James, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Kamala Harris. And he ends with a paean to Wakanda – the all too mythical nation celebrated in “Black Panther”: “If Baldwin and his glorious crew could gather again, they could hardly have a better place to reconvene and let the beautiful momentum of blackness wash over them as they sought to make America truly great. For the first time.”

Join us at the New School’s 12th Street Auditorium as Michael sits down with writer/activist Shaun King and singer/activist Harry Belafonte. This event is co-sponsored by the Executive Dean’s Office of the Schools of Public Engagement at The New School as part of the See Me After Class series. Executive Dean Mary Watson will provide opening remarks.

RSVP here by May 31, 2018 at 5pm EST. ID required upon arrival.











When: Mon., Jun. 4, 2018 at 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Where: The New School
66 W. 12th St.
212-229-5108
Price: $33 Option 1: Admission for one (1) and one (1) signed copy of What Truth Sounds Like. $53 Option 2: Admission for two (2) and one (1) signed copy of What Truth Sounds Like
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Strand is honored to present Michael Eric Dyson in celebration of his new book, What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America. This book is a follow-up to his bestseller Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, and is another timely exploration of America’s tortured racial politics.

Following his 2017 bestseller Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America highlights a pivotal moment in America’s recent past. In May, 1963 a leading politician ended up learning more than he had bargained for when he asked America’s then hottest writer and his friends over for a chat about black America’s rage. RFK walked away from the nearly three-hour meeting livid – that the black folk assembled didn’t understand politics, and that they weren’t as easy to talk to as Martin Luther King. But Kennedy’s anger quickly gave way to empathy. Kennedy set about changing policy – the meeting having transformed his thinking in fundamental ways. Every big argument about race that persists to this day got a hearing in that room: disdain for black dissent, the belief that black folk wallow in the politics of ingratitude and victimhood, and that they lack hustle and ingenuity.

In What Truth Sounds Like, Dr. Dyson deftly merges this past and our present to explore the tense intersection of the conflict between politics and prophecy – of whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured racial landscape. What Truth Sounds Like examines key players today – ranging from Jay-Z to Jordan Peele and LeBron James, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Kamala Harris. And he ends with a paean to Wakanda – the all too mythical nation celebrated in “Black Panther”: “If Baldwin and his glorious crew could gather again, they could hardly have a better place to reconvene and let the beautiful momentum of blackness wash over them as they sought to make America truly great. For the first time.”

Join us at the New School’s 12th Street Auditorium as Michael sits down with writer/activist Shaun King and singer/activist Harry Belafonte. This event is co-sponsored by the Executive Dean’s Office of the Schools of Public Engagement at The New School as part of the See Me After Class series. Executive Dean Mary Watson will provide opening remarks.

RSVP here by May 31, 2018 at 5pm EST. ID required upon arrival.

Buy tickets/get more info now