I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
TA-NEHISI COATESAddressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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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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Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
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When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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I did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that’s, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
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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 would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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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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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
TA-NEHISI COATES