To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
TA-NEHISI COATESIn particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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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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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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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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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[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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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.
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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 would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
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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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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
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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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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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