To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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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The essence of American racism is disrespect.
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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 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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Giving opportunities to other people, it’s only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.
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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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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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You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.
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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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With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage.
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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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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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That’s not an accident that Donald Trump didn’t begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
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It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited.
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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.
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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