Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
TA-NEHISI COATESI 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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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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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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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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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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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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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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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
TA-NEHISI COATES