What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
TA-NEHISI COATESI’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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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’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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
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An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.
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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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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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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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They’re right there waiting for it. A community of people who’ve been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.
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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 symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
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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 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 .
TA-NEHISI COATES