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 COATESI think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
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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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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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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[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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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
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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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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
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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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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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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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The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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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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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.
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I mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven.
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What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It’s the weight on our shoulders. That is what’s actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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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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That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
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Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
TA-NEHISI COATES