My mom used to tell me, I can’t use this phrase on the radio – but basically don’t be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.
TA-NEHISI COATESAnd I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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I’m asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It’s the weight on our shoulders. That is what’s actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
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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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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 .
TA-NEHISI COATES