An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
TA-NEHISI COATESIs the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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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Racism is, among other things.
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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 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 unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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You 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.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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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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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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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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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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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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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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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, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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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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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES