To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
TA-NEHISI COATES[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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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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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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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[Barack Obama] grew up in Hawaii, far, far removed from the most, you know, sort of violent, you know, tendencies of Jim Crow and segregation. He wasn’t directly exposed to that. He was untraumatized.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
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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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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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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It was a week after Donald Trump had won. And initially he was still optimistic. He felt that things would be OK ultimately. And I have to tell you, this is the area where, you know, I see, you know, some degree of contradiction.
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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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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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[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself.
TA-NEHISI COATES
![Ta-Nehisi Coates Quote - [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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/grey-grew-up-in-hawaii-that-gave-barack-obama.jpg)
![Ta-Nehisi Coates Quote - [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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/blue-grew-up-in-hawaii-that-gave-barack-obama.jpg)
![Ta-Nehisi Coates Quote - [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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/red-grew-up-in-hawaii-that-gave-barack-obama.jpg)
![Ta-Nehisi Coates Quote - [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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/brown-grew-up-in-hawaii-that-gave-barack-obama.jpg)
![Ta-Nehisi Coates Quote - [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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/white-grew-up-in-hawaii-that-gave-barack-obama.jpg)

