Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
TA-NEHISI COATESNever forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
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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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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there’s some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.
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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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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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 standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
TA-NEHISI COATES