Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhat 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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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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 mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven.
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[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.
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I’m asking you as an American to see all of the freedoms that you enjoy and see how they are rooted in things that the country you belong to condoned or actively participated in the past.
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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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The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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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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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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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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