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.
TA-NEHISI COATESAn 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.
TA-NEHISI COATESI would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
TA-NEHISI COATESI 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.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhat I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhat 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.
TA-NEHISI COATESThat’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.
TA-NEHISI COATESBetter you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
TA-NEHISI COATESMore specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people.
TA-NEHISI COATESRacism is, among other things.
TA-NEHISI COATESI 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 COATESOften ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
TA-NEHISI COATESYou don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
TA-NEHISI COATESAnd they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
TA-NEHISI COATESThe best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
TA-NEHISI COATESThe standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
TA-NEHISI COATESAn 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