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.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhat 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
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Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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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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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
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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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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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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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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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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
TA-NEHISI COATES