I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
TA-NEHISI COATESOften ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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 am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through–that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.
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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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[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.
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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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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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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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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES