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.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhat 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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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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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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’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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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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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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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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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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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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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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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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