And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
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I did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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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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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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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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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 Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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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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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
TA-NEHISI COATES