The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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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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Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
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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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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
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These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann’s to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.
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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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Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
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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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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 COATES