Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
TA-NEHISI COATESBarack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.
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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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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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This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
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What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It’s the weight on our shoulders. That is what’s actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
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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 the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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I mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven.
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All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy.
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