Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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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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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 think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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My mom used to tell me, I can’t use this phrase on the radio – but basically don’t be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.
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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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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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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.
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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
TA-NEHISI COATES