The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
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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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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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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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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[Donald Trump] went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong.
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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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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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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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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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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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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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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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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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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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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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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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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
TA-NEHISI COATES