To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
TA-NEHISI COATESMy 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Racism is, among other things.
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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann’s to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.
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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.
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An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
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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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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible.
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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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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES