The essence of American racism is disrespect.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhat 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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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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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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I’m asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.
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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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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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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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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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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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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.
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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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