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.
TA-NEHISI COATESI think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
-
-
Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
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 -
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that’s, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
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.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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 -
These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann’s to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.
TA-NEHISI COATES -
And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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 -
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