The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
TA-NEHISI COATESI think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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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 enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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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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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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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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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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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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And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
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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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
TA-NEHISI COATES