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.
TA-NEHISI COATESTwo hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
-
-
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 -
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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
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 -
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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
I did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
TA-NEHISI COATES