Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
TA-NEHISI COATESRacism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Racism is, among other things.
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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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I did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
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That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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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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They’re right there waiting for it. A community of people who’ve been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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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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 don’t know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that Barack Obama was sincere. It didn’t feel like a line to me.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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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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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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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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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[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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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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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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 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 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 progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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