[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
TA-NEHISI COATESAnd they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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[Donald Trump] went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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Racism is, among other things.
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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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Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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It was a week after Donald Trump had won. And initially he was still optimistic. He felt that things would be OK ultimately. And I have to tell you, this is the area where, you know, I see, you know, some degree of contradiction.
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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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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It’s the weight on our shoulders. That is what’s actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
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