Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
TA-NEHISI COATESBarack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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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An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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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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[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 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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The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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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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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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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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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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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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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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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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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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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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What 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.
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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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