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.
TA-NEHISI COATESTalk about class and hope no one notices.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.
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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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Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
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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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I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn’t mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it’s not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .
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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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What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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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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An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.
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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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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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.
TA-NEHISI COATES