The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
TA-NEHISI COATESNever forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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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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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When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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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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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I 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.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
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Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible.
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I think, as a writer, I’m in my own head.
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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 think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.
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