Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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Racism is, among other things.
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[Donald Trump] went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong.
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It was a week after Donald Trump had won. And initially he was still optimistic. He felt that things would be OK ultimately. And I have to tell you, this is the area where, you know, I see, you know, some degree of contradiction.
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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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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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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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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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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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Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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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