[Grew up in Hawaii] that gave [Barack Obama] a kind of optimism, an ability to see things, you know, and frankly, an ability to trust, you know, in his fellow, you know, white countrymen in a way that I, for instance, you know, and the vast majority of black people I know never really could.
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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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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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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Better you knuckle up and go for yours than have to bow your head and tuck your chain.
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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.
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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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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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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 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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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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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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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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.
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Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
TA-NEHISI COATES