I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
TA-NEHISI COATESGiving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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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The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
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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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Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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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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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.
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This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage.
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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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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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The Knowledge Rule 2080: From maggots to men, the world is a corner bully.
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