You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there’s some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.
TA-NEHISI COATES[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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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I think there’s a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that’s not really it.
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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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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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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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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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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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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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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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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
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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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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.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
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This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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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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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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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
TA-NEHISI COATES