After the initial shock subsided, the events of 9/11 made people realize our nation's collective vulnerability. But terror is also present in our society in the form of oppression, according to Professor Michael Eric Dyson.
In a dynamic style that combined modern urban slang, obscure intellectual allusions and the emotional intensity of a Baptist preacher, Dyson, a professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies, revisited these events yesterday afternoon in front of an auditorium filled with students, faculty and alumni.
In a lecture entitled "Religions and Terrors," Dyson pointed out that U.S. history is filled with domestic terror similar in nature to the international terror of 9/11. "In our own nation, issues of race, gender and class have made other human beings vulnerable to the terror of our own society," Dyson said.
The feeling of collective vulnerability was the most important aftereffect of 9/11, Dyson said. As he half-joked, Americans understood for the first time what it feels like to be black in America, because the nation was "subjected to arbitrary forms of violence without just recompense."
Before those events, "We were not atuned to the critical measure and ways in which terror was already the plight of so many people," Dyson said.
He began his speech by tracing the historical relationship between terror and religion.
"Religion is intimately linked to the issues of terror," Dyson said, adding that this applies to most religions -- not just Islam -- as is often portrayed.
He discussed the overwhelming presence of political and social injustice, which he referred to as forms of "communal terror."
Dyson pointed to the criminal justice system as one manifestation of such terror.
"The punishment industry is just out of control," he said. "You got 2.1 million people locked up, more than any other Western industrial nation."
He said that the system re-emphasizes the already established social and racial hierarchies in our society, primarily because it "targets with vicious specificity."
But this is only one of many forms of terror present in society, according to Dyson.
"The collective notion of terror is associated with norms of social oppression," Dyson said, adding that oppression along racial, sexual and economic lines has been "particularly virulent."
The audience was very responsive to Dyson's humorous and insightful comments.
"He touched on relatively progressive topics in our society," College junior Michael Egnal said.
Stan Morgan, a 1975 College alumnus, was also approving of Dyson's speech.
"He is not afraid to hurt people's feelings so long as the truth gets out," Morgan said. "He doesn't sugarcoat anything, and you can appreciate that."
