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 COATESWhen you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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[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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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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You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that’s, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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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I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.
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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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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.
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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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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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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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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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
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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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