Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
TA-NEHISI COATESI 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 .
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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’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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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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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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It was a week after Donald Trump had won. And initially he was still optimistic. He felt that things would be OK ultimately. And I have to tell you, this is the area where, you know, I see, you know, some degree of contradiction.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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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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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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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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.
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You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there’s some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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