The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
TA-NEHISI COATESAddressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
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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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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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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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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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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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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An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.
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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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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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