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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

[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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Celebrity Country Crow Hawaii Know Man Most Personality President Remove Segregation Tendency Violent
In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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Community Country Describe Direct Particular People Person
I’m asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.
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Actively Ask Belong Country Freedom Long Participate Rooted
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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Actually Always Embarrassment Folk Future Really Small Sound Symbolism
I 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.
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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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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
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I did not know then that this is what life is – just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you’re swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.
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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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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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These were the days when I powerfully believed Breyers and Entenmann’s to be pioneers in the field of antidepressants.
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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.
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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.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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Another Group Human Join One Skepticism Sympathy Unlearn
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
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Broad Hatred Merely More Often Racism Simplist Sympathy Toward
Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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Demographics Percent Somebody Statement Upward Voting

I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.

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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.

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