And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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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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[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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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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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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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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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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When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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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.
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Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
TA-NEHISI COATES