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.
TA-NEHISI COATESWhat I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe.
More Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes
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What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.
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The progressive approach to policy which directly addresses the effects of white supremacy is simple.
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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 am not asking you as a white person to see yourself as an enslaver.
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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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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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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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Humans also tend to find community to be pleasurable, and within the boundaries of community relationships, words.
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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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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.
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What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It’s the weight on our shoulders. That is what’s actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.
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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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What it is is that Barack Obama was raised by a white mother and two white grandparents who, A, told him he was black and that there was nothing wrong with being black.
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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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Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.
TA-NEHISI COATES