When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
TA-NEHISI COATESIt 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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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.
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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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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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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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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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I don’t know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that Barack Obama was sincere. It didn’t feel like a line to me.
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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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
TA-NEHISI COATES