Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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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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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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 progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
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[Donald Trump] went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong.
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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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Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
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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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I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES






