Talk about class and hope no one notices.
TA-NEHISI COATESJust because you came here in 1880, 1950, whenever, you became an American. You get to celebrate July 4th like every other American.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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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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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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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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And they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.
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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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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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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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What 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.
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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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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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More specifically, Barack Obama is the president of a congenitally racist country, erected upon the plunder of life, liberty, labor, and land. This plunder has not been exclusive to black people.
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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