I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
TA-NEHISI COATESIt 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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 did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
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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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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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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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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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