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.
TA-NEHISI COATESIf George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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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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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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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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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES






