I 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 COATESTwo hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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I don’t know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that Barack Obama was sincere. It didn’t feel like a line to me.
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They’re right there waiting for it. A community of people who’ve been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.
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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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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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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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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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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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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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