The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal.
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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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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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[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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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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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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I think the president [Barack Obama] adopted some of that same language, but took it into the White House.
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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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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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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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