I don’t know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that Barack Obama was sincere. It didn’t feel like a line to me.
TA-NEHISI COATESAll you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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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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I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
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The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
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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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An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.
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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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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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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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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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