I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
TA-NEHISI COATESSegregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
-
-
Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
My mom used to tell me, I can’t use this phrase on the radio – but basically don’t be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
TA-NEHISI COATES -
[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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
TA-NEHISI COATES






