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.
TA-NEHISI COATESReparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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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An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
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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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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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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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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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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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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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Racism is, among other things.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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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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These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann’s to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.
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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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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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