The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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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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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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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 would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
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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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I think there’s a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that’s not really it.
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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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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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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 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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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