Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
TA-NEHISI COATESBetter you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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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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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What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
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