I think there’s a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that’s not really it.
TA-NEHISI COATESI think there’s a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that’s not really it.
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.
TA-NEHISI COATESThe standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
TA-NEHISI COATESIt was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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.
TA-NEHISI COATESThirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
TA-NEHISI COATESNever forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
TA-NEHISI COATESThe best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhat I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
TA-NEHISI COATESI think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
TA-NEHISI COATESSegregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhen nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
TA-NEHISI COATESIf George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
TA-NEHISI COATESI 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 COATES[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.
TA-NEHISI COATESRacism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
TA-NEHISI COATES