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 .
TA-NEHISI COATESMore 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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[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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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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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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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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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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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