The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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Racism is, among other things.
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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 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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And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
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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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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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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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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
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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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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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