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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Always Between Condition Difference First Government Head Many Neighbourhood Place Responsible Schmo Way
To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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Black Demand Enable Good Oppression People Prevent Twice White
Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
TA-NEHISI COATES

Back Giving Know might Opportunity Other Pay People Right Want
An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
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Color Concentrate Country Effect Instead Melanin Paired Poverty Spreadma Cross
[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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Celebrity Country Crow Hawaii Know Man Most Personality President Remove Segregation Tendency Violent
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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Feel Heartbroken Know Moment Need Right Tell
[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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Built Country Know Muslim Out Person President Strong Succeed Unique
You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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Live Myth Seriously Taken World
Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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Area Ceratin Mean Opportunity People Planned Segregation System
Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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Country Jewish People Peron Race Thriftier
And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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Black Destroy Dispoortioante Necessitate Number Them
I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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Ask Country Enslaver Past Person White Yourself
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.
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Biracial Country Know People Person Reading Say Some Sort Thinking Under White
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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After Believe Country Optimistic People Person President Running Won
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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Country Feel Many People Person Police Skepticism Towards
Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
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Denying End Fact Heritage Mean Reparation Scarfing Talk

[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

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Popular Authors

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