Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
TA-NEHISI COATESIt was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible.
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Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
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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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[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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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.
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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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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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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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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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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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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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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES