When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
TA-NEHISI COATESI would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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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What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through–that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.
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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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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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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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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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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.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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