Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
TA-NEHISI COATES[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Racism is, among other things.
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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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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people.
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[Donald Trump] went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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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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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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[Barack Obama] grew up in Hawaii, far, far removed from the most, you know, sort of violent, you know, tendencies of Jim Crow and segregation. He wasn’t directly exposed to that. He was untraumatized.
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I mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven.
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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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It was a week after Donald Trump had won. And initially he was still optimistic. He felt that things would be OK ultimately. And I have to tell you, this is the area where, you know, I see, you know, some degree of contradiction.
TA-NEHISI COATES