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 COATESSegregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann’s to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.
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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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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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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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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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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[Barack Obama] grew up in Hawaii, far, far removed from the most, you know, sort of violent, you know, tendencies of Jim Crow and segregation. He wasn’t directly exposed to that. He was untraumatized.
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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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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES