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.
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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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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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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More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people.
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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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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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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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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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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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Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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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What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES