OPEN HEART, OPEN ARMS

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

SOCIAL CRITICS SHOULD be wary of proximity. Examining a volatile issue--sex, class, race--from too far away can make the resulting work seem bloodless. Standing too close puts the observer at risk of being sucked into the overly confessional world of daytime talk shows. In his new essay collection, Between God and Gangsta Rap: Bearing Witness to Black Culture (Oxford; $23; 218 pages), Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, as well as a Baptist minister, gets the distance just right. In his prose one hears the fervor of a Sunday sermon; in his ideas one sees the analytic scrupulousness of a man who knows a thing or two about tenure committees.

Dyson is one of a group of contemporary black writers, including bell hooks, Cornel West and Derrick Bell, who are forging what might be called a new canon of inclusion. While celebrating black identity, Dyson seeks connections with other minority groups, such as feminists, gays and Latinos. The O.J. Simpson trial was seen by many as a symbol of racial strife; Dyson sees some hope. "Its major players are a virtual rainbow of color, gender, ethnicity, and class," he says. "Judge Lance Ito is Asian-American. Johnnie Cochran is African-American. Marcia Clark is a white woman. And Robert Shapiro, like Clark, is Jewish. A judicial landmark is being constructed by people who a few decades ago couldn't stand equally together in the same court."

In his discussion of issues such as crime and gender relations, Dyson frequently brings in his personal experience. The book's first chapter is an open letter to his brother, who was convicted of murder several years ago, and is serving a life sentence in prison. The last is an openhearted letter to his wife, whom he married after a series of failed relationships. When Dyson writes, "The important thing is that as black men, as black brothers, we learn to embrace each other despite the differences that divide us," he's speaking not just from the pulpit but from experience.

Dyson is not afraid to go against the grain. He defends Martin Luther King against revisionists who would portray him as a "sell-out" compared with the more militant--and currently more fashionable--Malcolm X. Dyson argues that those who (rightly) lionize Malcolm should re-examine the radical final stage of King's life, in which he sought to unify "poor blacks, whites, Latinos and native Americans in a multiracial coalition ... to challenge the unfair distribution of wealth." Dyson also offers a defense of singer Mariah Carey against critics who say her music is not "authentically" black. He writes: "What Carey's career may teach us is that paranoia about purity is the real enemy of black cultural expression, which at its best is characterized by the amalgamation of radically different elements." Dyson's worthy amalgam of essays proves that correct.