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.
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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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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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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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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[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
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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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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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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
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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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
TA-NEHISI COATES