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 COATESYou 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
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My 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.
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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.
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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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What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through–that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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.
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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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