Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
TA-NEHISI COATESThat’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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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Talk about class and hope no one notices.
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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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Racism is, among other things.
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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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[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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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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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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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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
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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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