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.
TA-NEHISI COATESThe standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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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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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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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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Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it’s just a few idiots. Isn’t. It’s the country.
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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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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.
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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