I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
TA-NEHISI COATESYou don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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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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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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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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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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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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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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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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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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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
TA-NEHISI COATES