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.
TA-NEHISI COATESI am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
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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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
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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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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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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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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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They’re right there waiting for it. A community of people who’ve been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that’s, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
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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 sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
TA-NEHISI COATES