Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains-whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.
TA-NEHISI COATESI think there’s a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that’s not really it.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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[E]mpathy – not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance – is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.
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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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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
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They’re right there waiting for it. A community of people who’ve been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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I think there’s a sort of, you know, very thin way of reading this that says, well, Barack Obama is biracial thus that gives him some understanding of both white America and black America, but that’s not really it.
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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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Often ironic and self-deprecating – are always spoken that take on other meanings when uttered by others.
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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 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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When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible.
TA-NEHISI COATES