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.
TA-NEHISI COATESI 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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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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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.
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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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[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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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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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
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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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[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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To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
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What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
TA-NEHISI COATES