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.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhen you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth.
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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You don’t just get the good part. You get the bad part, too. You get all of it.
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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.
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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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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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All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy.
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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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The symbolism was in – and this sounds really, really small, but it’s actually big for African-Americans – the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
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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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The unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there’s some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.
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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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