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 COATESTo prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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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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Racism is, among other things.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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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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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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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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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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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.
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Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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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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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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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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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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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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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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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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