Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
TA-NEHISI COATES[Donald Trump] went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Talk about class and hope no one notices.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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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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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through–that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
It was a week after Donald Trump had won. And initially he was still optimistic. He felt that things would be OK ultimately. And I have to tell you, this is the area where, you know, I see, you know, some degree of contradiction.
TA-NEHISI COATES