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.
TA-NEHISI COATESMy 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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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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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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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.
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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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[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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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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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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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[Barack Obama] grew up in Hawaii, far, far removed from the most, you know, sort of violent, you know, tendencies of Jim Crow and segregation. He wasn’t directly exposed to that. He was untraumatized.
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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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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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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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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 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