What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
TA-NEHISI COATES
Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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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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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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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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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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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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That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES