I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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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You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that’s, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
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I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
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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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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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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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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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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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