I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhen nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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I mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven.
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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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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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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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 standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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