I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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[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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[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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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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 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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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.
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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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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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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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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