Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
TA-NEHISI COATESOften ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.
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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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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES