And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
TA-NEHISI COATESReparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there’s some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.
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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 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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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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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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Reparations 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.
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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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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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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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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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Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
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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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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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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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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[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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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Racism is, among other things.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
TA-NEHISI COATES