Michael Eric Dyson's Pride: One of the Seven Deadly Sins

Michael Eric Dyson's "Pride" is a part of a series on the seven deadly sins that is being put out by the Oxford University Press chronicling the seven deadly sins in a biblical sense. Mr. Dyson is a professor of theological studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a social critic who has had an accomplished career as a writer, speaker, and activist. Dyson is probably best known for his critique of Bill Cosby's recent outspokenness on the future of black America in "Is Bill Cosby Right or Has the Black Middle Class Lost its Mind?"

Dyson For those of you unaware of what the seven deadly sins are they include: pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust. Dyson first of all takes aim at the folks who seem to think that humanism and concern for things in this realm should be trumped by the same hellfire and brimstone point of view or right and wrong, black and white. Dyson says that the list of the seven deadly sins is likely to change as it has changed in places like Europe in order to adapt to the needs of today. Dyson mentions a survey of Europeans British people specifically to come up with the seven worse traits that you can find in a human being. Cruelty, adultery bigotry, dishonesty, hypocrisy, greed, and selfishness the one original to round out the field were the entire new list. Now some would say these overlap each other and certainly some of them do, or heck those Europeans are so divorced from God that they wouldn't have the slightest clue as how to distinguish from right and wrong.

The main thing that I took from this book is that Dyson stresses the fact that there is nothing wrong with pride in your culture and pride in your country, but it becomes dangerous when that pride turns into outright hubris. Dyson goes on to say there seems to be a lack of willingness on behalf of the African American community to be proud often times because it will look to white Americans as if blacks aren't also proud of their country if they are "too proud" of their culture. Dyson also points out examples of people such as himself who went from being welfare dad who dropped out of college to a Pulitzer Prize winning author.