Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.
TA-NEHISI COATESTalk about class and hope no one notices.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system.
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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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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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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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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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My mom used to tell me, I can’t use this phrase on the radio – but basically don’t be one of those dudes hanging on the corner.
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Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that’s a statement.
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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 would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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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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And I think that’s reflected in the fact that, when we have problems that really are problems of employment, that are really problems of mental health, that are really problems of drugs, our answer is the police.
TA-NEHISI COATES