They’re right there waiting for it. A community of people who’ve been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.
TA-NEHISI COATESReparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
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I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.
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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
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Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
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[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.
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You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there’s some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.
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This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.
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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
TA-NEHISI COATES