I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
TA-NEHISI COATESThe unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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Racism is, among other things.
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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
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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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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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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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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.
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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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I’m asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.
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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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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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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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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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