The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.
TA-NEHISI COATESAn 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.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.
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Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?
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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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I think President [Barack] Obama deeply underestimated the force of white supremacy in American life.
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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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I am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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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Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
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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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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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I mean, the president, you know, at one point when he was campaigning said I believe that Donald Trump was not qualified to run a 7-Eleven.
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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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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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To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good.
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And I think, like, there’s a crucial difference between being, you know, Joe Schmo in the neighborhood and being the head, you know, of the government that, you know, in many ways is largely responsible for those conditions in the first place.
TA-NEHISI COATES