In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.
TA-NEHISI COATESThe greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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Just because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
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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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You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that’s, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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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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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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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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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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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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES






