What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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 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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[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.
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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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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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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
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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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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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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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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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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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It’s the weight on our shoulders. That is what’s actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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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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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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
TA-NEHISI COATES