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.
TA-NEHISI COATESHumans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Racism is, among other things.
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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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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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
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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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that’s, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
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I think there’s a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that’s not really it.
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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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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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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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